"THE ARTS BELONG TO EVERYONE"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 448, 23 January 1948, Page 14

"THE ARTS BELONG TO EVERYONE"

Council's Work in Post-war Britain

By Airmail-Special to "The |

Listener

" from London

HE Arts Council of Great Britain, known during the war as the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) has just issued its second annual report, and it’s possible to get some idea now of the shape in which its services will remain -as a permanent arrangement, and a lasting necessity of the new order in Britain. CEMA’s job in the war was to replace the normal sources of supply of aesthetic entertainment, which had been disorganised by the circumstances of the moment. That necessity has passed, but another remains, which is to supplement rather than to replace, and to encourage by setting a high standard; also to distribute, since the arts have been confined in the past to centres where they were commercially profitable. The continuance in peacetime of this State-supported service is an acknowledgment that the arts properly belong to everyone, and that if they are not put within everyone’s reach through private enterprise, something should be done about it-as it was in wartime, when the need -seemed much more

urgent. The publication of the report has been the occasion here for the Press to consider the Art Council’s achievement and its future, and I made it the occasion to call, on behalf of The New Zealand Listener, and find out what was going on. A good deal that’s interesting is going on. E. W. White, Assistant Secretary to the Council, handed me a copy of the annual report (a fine piece of printing in itself) and explained some of the salient points of the Council’s policy. Direct and Indirect Action It works in two ways: through existing organisations which can show that they are non-profit-making, and are ploughing back their takings into the particular art they are devoted to (for example, the semi-co-operative London Philharmonic Orchestra, but not the London Symphony Orchestra); and through new ventures, directly sponsored with full responsibility. Where these new ventures succeed, the organisation is handed over to local people, with advice and guarantees offered, but where there is not sufficient demand to sustain the venture, it is allowed to drop. Thus

the Council’s Grant in Aid (now £350,000 altogether) is used where it will do most good. Yet there may always be under-populated parts of the country where this policy can hardly be applied, for instance, isolated parts of | Scotland and Wales, where the number of people interested in the arts is bound to be few-perhaps even too few-and here the Council considers that it still has a mandate to make the arts accessible to them. In.most cases, though, its chief function is to prove what could not be proved without the backing of a large organisation-just as the British Council, now working within the field of the Commonwealth as the Arts Council is working within Great Britain, has recently proved that it is practicable and worthwhile to send an orchestra (the Boyd Neel) to the Antipodes, The policy of operating through existing organisations can be worked, in the main, in drama and music, but not in the visual arts-there was no organisation big enough to do what was needed. So in this case, the Council is still working by direct provision. It has

its own service for assembling exhibitions, packing them, routing them round the country, and supplying lecturers to go with them. As The Times says: "Though not everyone will approve equally of each exhibition, at least a body which has circulated works by Paul Klee, ths Hickman Bacon collection of early English water-colours, and» a_ superlative collection of Spanish old masters, cannot be accused of partiality." Music Clubs Qne point Mr. White made about the Council’s peacetime work is that "workers" are not thought of separately. It wants them to be a part of the normal audience, Factory canteen concerts were run by CEMA and ENSA during the war, but with ‘the coming of peace the special wartime conditions which had led to their enthusiastic reception had disappeared. At the same time, however, the Arts Council assumed responsibility for the continuance of the music clubs for war-workers which ENSA had started. These are now run on popular lines, and membership is not confined to the factories from which they started, but is open to all in the districts they serve. About 25 "Industrial Music ‘' Clubs" are in existence, meeting weekly or fortnightly after working hours, alternating professional recitals with gramophcne evenings. (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) On the larger scale, the Arts Council helps the Covent Garden Opera Trust (now building up its repertory) through a special grant of £30,000 a year, the Sadler’s Wells Foundation, and symphony orchestras. It spent, in the year ended last March, £15,000 on Sadler’s Wells, nearly £26,000 on symphony orchestras, £8700 on chamber and string orchestras, and £3700 on string quartets; £36,000 on directly provided concerts; £41,000 on losses sustained by theatrical companies specially engaged for Arts Council tours; and £34,000 on art. The distribution of its expenditure over the arts is fairly indicated by these figures: Music and opera, £182,000; drama, £100,000; art, £34,000. In one field the ‘Arts Council has made profits-it commissioned lithographs from well-known artists during the war, for sale to Services and Government Departments generally, to brighten the walls of factories, hostels, British restaurants and the innumerable temporary _ buildings. They — were printed with a surround, "needing no frame, and in the year ended last March a profit of £175 was shown on the sales. Back Room When I asked Mr. White if he could show me the Arts Council at work, he suggested that. I follow him downstairs to the head office. of the Southern Region. We wound ane aommted — dark corridors, .pas} of obviously wartitne" partitic Council oceupi s Lord rs old home in St. James’s Free French were in it during the war) and we came to a grubby but pleasant little room at the back. Helen: Munro, director of the Southern Region, was out, but Christopher Bradshaw, one of her assistants, undertook my instruction. There’s so much to do, he said, that the only problem is where to go next. Around the walls of his room were Arts Council posters-all very pleasing to the eye, one of the moneymaking Jithographs (a Paul Nash) and a map. We started on the map. The Southern Region is a leg-shaped area, with its foot. on the Isle of Wight, the sole including some of the south coast, nd the calf extendin _ upwards to Ox! re. er" seemed queer

shape, but Bradshaw explained that CEMA took over Civil Defence Regions, because that was the natural way to work, when transport and communications were organised in regions, The region contains places with very different conditions-some rural areas, where the public arts have been neglected, coastal resorts which lie dead through half the year, and parts of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire which suffer through being too near to London to be visited by musicians and _ theatrical companies. The posters that covered the rest’ of the wall were all agreeable pieces of two-colour typography in Gill sanserif type: A marionette theatre presenting "The Lost Princéss" (an Arabian nights story) in Church House, Bridport, where fishing nets are made for fishermen all over the world; "French Paintings" from Mr. Peto’s private collection are shown at Ryde; Kathleen Long gives a piano recital at Blandford; "Ballad for Two" (which flopped when it. was known as The Modern’ Expressive Dance) is also at Bridport; a "Concert" at the Grammar School, Lyme Regis, and another concert in the Yetminster Town Hall-a tiny place, but distinguished by a vicar who can fill the hall if he advertises a good concert: in advance from the neighbouring pulpits. Prices usually run at 1/6d, 2/6d and 3/6d, and art exhibitions are usually 6d. The posters are printed by a small London printer who has the type, but thinks the jobs he has to do for the Arts Council are pretty queer. Frances Hodgkins Exhibition Bradshaw talked about the kind of work that has to be done in the regional office. When I first went in, he was searching for the right name to use for a new presentation-whether it should be. "Intimate Opera" or "Opera in Miniature" or "Opera for "You," or what. "We try to avoid the things that simply put people off,’ he said. "We have to avoid the small social prejudices of little places, prejudices against ‘artiness’ and so on. No two places are the same, and you always find there’s an astonishing power in one single person in a small place." (Nothing, by the way, (continued on next page)

| THE ARTS IN. BRITAIN (continued from previous page) is putting people off from the current | exhibition of Van Gogh paintings at the Tate, an Arts Council venture that is drawing huge crowds.) He mentioned Frances Hodgkins, the painter of New Zealand birth who died a few months ago, and I learned that a memorial exhibition had been organised by the Isle of Purbeck Arts Club at

Swanage, Dorset (where Mr. Attlee and Mr. Bevin usually spend their holidays when they have them). The president oft the club is a schoolmaster and the secretary is the daughter of the town’s biggest draper. Frances Hodgkins lived a few miles away, and was regarded as a Dorset artist-a~ local person-so, .after her death, the Club organised an exhibition and Arts Council sent a lecturer. She was the kind of painter The Times leader writer may have had in mind when he wrote "not everyone will approve equally of each exhibition" but the committee of drapers and teachers and retired people in Swanage weren’t afraid of that. It may be some years yet before New Zealand has many; such committees, but when it does, it will deserve to have also some organisation

like the Arts Council.

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