Jonathan Long and Emma Wood: Counting the real costs of cutbacks on culture

Just recently, though, Leeds City Council announced that it was planning to cut two of its flagship events. The pop music festival, Party in the Park, will not be part of this year’s events and Opera in the Park is likely to follow. This seems at odds with previous rhetoric where even these relatively small-scale events were lauded for the economic boost they brought to local communities.

Behind the headline it turns out that, for its own financial reasons, Radio Aire has withdrawn its sponsorship of Party in the Park. Without Party in the Park, the costs of staging equipment and other infrastructure that would have been shared would fall entirely on Opera in the Park, making it unviable.

Of course, Leeds City Council is not alone. The council in Newcastle has already made national headlines when it announced it was cutting all of its spending on the arts. “Crisis talks” did then make those cuts less severe.

These are cuts made in response to large reductions in the funding councils receive from the Government in Westminster. They reflect the Government’s belief that the public sector should be doing less and that the private sector and voluntary sector should do more. Readers may though have seen recent statistics showing how these cuts are falling disproportionately on northern cities. Certainly Leeds has been faced with a difficult financial position, with its funding from central Government over the next two years cut by some £80m. And this comes on successive years of similar cuts.

This scale of reduction inevitably means more than efficiency saving and paring back. Councils have to make decisions about priorities. For example, faced with this kind of challenge earlier this year Doncaster agreed to close all of its homes for older people.

In such circumstances, can leisure compete with the need to provide education, social care or even empty bins? When the only leisure service that councils are statutorily obliged to make is library provision (and around the country even they are experiencing cuts), it is perhaps not surprising that the arts, culture and sport are vulnerable.

As a result, the Sport and Recreation Alliance, for example, is concerned for the Olympic legacy. So many of those who take part do so in council facilities, including parks and playing fields, and so many sports clubs are dependent on council support.

Even within the leisure budget it probably appears an easier decision to cut the spending on events rather than cut other cultural areas which have required a more substantial investment such as a recently-built museum or gallery. So what are the benefits that accrue from a programme of events?

According to research conducted at Leeds Metropolitan University, councils saw the benefits a few years ago largely in terms of social and cultural pay-offs. Now the justification tends once again to be looked for through economic benefits.

Something like Party in the Park, which was intended primarily for young people living in Leeds, is not likely to bring a large injection of additional spending. Elsewhere, our research of smaller events did indicate an economic benefit. Although this was not great, in some cases, like Preston Mela, a proportion of the benefits did last for a surprisingly extended period of time.

Even where the economic returns were modest, hard-hearted business owners recognised the contribution such events could make to community cohesion and were supportive.

The Government’s hope is that others will take over responsibility from councils. However, community organisations and voluntary groups are likely to be daunted by something like Party in the Park, attracting 50,000-70,000 people. If the event were to be staged on a purely commercial basis the necessary ticket prices would challenge the social purpose of offering something for people in Leeds with low incomes.

All this is happening at a time when Leeds City Council is consulting on whether it should be bidding to be European Capital of Culture in 2023. That notwithstanding, we need to be clear about what we hope for from the cultural offer of the places we live in.

We need to work out the relationship between the cultural forms which are likely to be written about on the arts pages of newspapers and provision that is available to all irrespective of the money they have.

Who exactly does benefit from such events?

Those deliberations around the European Capital of Culture will inevitably have to address similar issues of priorities, benefits and financial support.

Professor Jonathan Long and Dr Emma Wood are academics at Leeds Metropolitan University.