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Under fire from their own government, how can UK artists step forward on a global stage? Photograph: Sergei Ilnitsky/ EPA
Under fire from their own government, how can UK artists step forward on a global stage? Photograph: Sergei Ilnitsky/ EPA

Culture cuts: UK arts will also suffer from losing the home advantage

This article is more than 11 years old
In light of London 2012, says Simon Tait, why is there no cabinet presence at Edinburgh's international culture summit?

Cultural diplomacy is not about whose army wins any more, said professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University to Will Gompertz on the Today programme this morning; it's whose story wins. He calls it "soft power" – the influence of information technology is now a powerful weapon of mass empathy.

Nye has the curious title of 'university distinguished service professor', but he has been one of America's leading political scientists, and a peacenik who has lectured on almost anything in relation to diplomatic politics except the arts. Now he has reached them at the international culture summit in Edinburgh, where he will debate "the role of arts and culture in deepening relationships between culture and nations".

It coincides with the Edinburgh International Festival, of course, and is a politically weighted, though not heavyweight, event taking place at the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish culture minister is taking the lead – no sign of the British culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, but Ed Vaizey is his rep. Certainly no cabinet presence.

Yet in the light of what has just happened in London, cultural diplomacy is the most profoundly relevant subject of them all, more far reaching by miles and decades than considerations of how to avoid the double-dip recessing even further.

London 2012 was the Equality Games, the Women's Games, the Friendly Games, the Diversity Games, the British Games, and at least one person thinks it was Boris' Games, but it was the first modern Olympic Games to have culture at its base, and the shock and delight is that everybody recognised it (try to forget the closing ceremony on Sunday, the tribute to talent shows – that was a nasty aberration).

It was about sport and winning, but much more it was about emotion, design, colour, sound, performance, understanding, response, texture and connection. Ruth Mackenzie likes to evoke the ancient Olympic ideal of the Olympic Truce in which all wars stopped as the athletes, but also the aesthetes (poetry and dance were part of the Olympiad in ancient Greece) competed.

As you would expect, the British Council is a major presence at the Edinburgh summit in the person of born-again art lover Martin Davidson. The BC chief executive once believed that cultural diplomacy could happen without art and had an epiphany when a combo of the then foreign secretary, David Miliband, and Anthony Caro had a word. Davidson is now a St Paul among the apostles of art, which (he said yesterday) "acts as a bridge between nations, breaks down barriers and crosses political divides, allowing people worldwide to relate to our common humanity".

Today they will be talking about funding, the importance of sustaining it, and the influence of private philanthropy – at which point the heart sinks. It suddenly becomes clear that the whole thing is being hijacked by the champions of privatisation and that with all the rhetoric the politicians give us about the importance of cultural diplomacy, governments around the world have no intention of reducing the process of cutting arts subsidy.

The British Council is working on a 30% reduced budget, another indicator of the priority the government gives to culture. Far better to further the influence of cultural diplomacy in politics, economics and conflict by cutting the culture ministry by half and moving it into the attic of a real government department. And then – why not? – abolish it completely.

This blog was originally published by Arts Industry

Simon Tait is editor of Arts Industry magazine – follow the publication on Twitter @ArtsIndustryMag

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