“Art is the lie that enables us to realise the truth.” So said Pablo Picasso. One fundamental truth is that art education in the UK is facing an uncertain future due to large-scale cuts being meted out in 2021 as the country seeks to rebalance the economy after the unprecedented damage caused by Covid-19.
The UK government announced plans in May to cut funding for art and design courses by 50% across higher education (HE) institutions in England. The news will undoubtedly affect the further education (FE) sector as potential students perhaps think twice about studying art at college.
Labour has warned that a creativity crisis may be looming on the horizon after a decade of austerity has seen the arts face severe underinvestment. One in eight art and design teachers at GCSE level have left the profession over the past 10 years, leaving the subject in a state of flux.
The government countered these claims through school standards minister, Nick Gibb, who said: “Alongside funding for schools, the department has invested nearly £620m from 2016 to 2021 in a diverse portfolio of music and arts education programmes to ensure all children, whatever their background, have access to a high-quality education in music and arts.”
FE arts lecturers face an uphill battle persuading the current government of the merits of art courses. They are battling against the assumption that their worth is considerably less than those courses that direct students to "key industries and the delivery of vital public services".
Sam Phillips, the editor of RA Magazine, warned in 2019 that the Augar Review’s recommendation that students who do not achieve at least three Ds at A-level should not qualify for university funding was a “catastrophe for our culture as much as for those individuals” that “will cut off the pipeline of Britain’s artistic talent”.
“Arts foundation courses in both colleges and universities, for decades a bridge from school to undergraduate study, have already been closing across the country,” he said. “As further education courses, they receive less funding than higher education courses, and their decline mirrors a funding cut of 8% to further education as a whole since 2010–11.”
Last year’s A-Level results released by Ofqual saw yet another decline in the number of students taking art and design. The overall number of students who took art and design A-Levels fell by 305 from 39,220 in 2019 to 38,915 in 2020. This represents the third consecutive year of a downward trend in popularity for creative subjects at school, college and university levels.
Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker was moved to dismiss the plans as “astounding”, before warning that the 50% funding cut to arts subjects at universities would make arts subjects the domain of wealthy domestic and foreign students.
Meanwhile, 300 key art world figures put pen to paper to an open letter calling on the government to rethink its art funding decision. The letter, which included Tate director Maria Balshaw and the artist Sonia Boyce, stated: “This proposal will detract from one of the UK’s fastest-growing economies. The creative industries contributed £116bn in GVA [gross value added] in 2019 and supports one in every 16 jobs.”
This point is a pertinent one yet it is consistently lost amid the noise for STEM subjects. A halving of arts subject funding serves to ultimately devalue arts and culture across the board. Although putting a cash figure on the arts misses its intangible value, the UK’s creative industries are world-renowned and FE needs art lecturers to hone burgeoning talent.
The Office for Students (OfS) moved to quell concerns over the proposed cuts, stating that “universities and colleges will continue to receive the full tuition fee loan for students on these courses (up to £9,250)”. It added that “the proposed reduction relates to a much smaller subsidy that is currently provided by the OfS, designed to help universities and colleges deliver subjects that are expensive to teach”.
The OfS statement went on to state that whereas the current subsidy stands at around £243 per full-time college student, which is paid directly to universities and colleges, rather than to students. A 50% cut would therefore see this subsidy reduce to £121.50 per student per year – “equivalent to a reduction of around 1% of the combined tuition fee and OfS funding”.
There was also an announcement from the government in 2021 pledging an additional £10m in funding to the OfS to be earmarked to support specialist providers including music and arts institutions. This brings the government’s total contribution to £53m for the 2021/22 academic year. Leading arts schools and universities, such as The Royal College of Art and The Courtauld Institute of Art, will be beneficiaries of the funding.
The Arts Council is central to helping distribute the UK government’s Culture Recovery Fund, which amounts to a huge £1.57bn designed to support cultural organisations as they navigate their way through the pandemic.
In October 2020, it was announced that a total of 558 arts organisations were to benefit from a share of £76m in the biggest art and culture windfall from the Culture Recovery Fund to date. The move was hailed by culture secretary Oliver Dowden, who explained: “This is more vital funding to protect cultural gems across the country, save jobs and prepare the arts to bounce back. Through Arts Council England we are delivering the biggest ever investment in the arts in record time.”
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/art-under-threat-crisis-britain-higher-education
https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/10-16-august-2020/2020-a-level-results/
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