Sarah Maxfield: State of the arts – a region creating world-class work

And yet, from Sunday jaunts to York’s National Railway Museum, seeing Sadler’s Wells perform Swan Lake in a Big Top in Sheffield, to attending concerts at City Hall, the arts and museums were absolutely part of our normal family life.

When I left home for university, I had laid down the foundation of cultural experiences and enthusiasms which has shaped my life ever since.

It was with a sense of homecoming that I took up a job with the Arts Council in Yorkshire two years ago.

Growing up, I had no feeling that we were starved of the arts – far from it – and yet I know objectively that Yorkshire’s cultural landscape is far broader, richer and more varied than it was 30 years ago.

The vigour and ambition of arts and culture across Yorkshire is striking, despite the recent reductions to public funding.

The Arts Council’s role is to invest in a considered way to support the whole arts and cultural eco-system. As custodians of public money, we consider many factors in order to appeal to a range of audience interests, as well as geography.

Of course, the nation’s cultural life is not all reliant on Arts Council support. We also have a thriving commercial sector and amateur activity across the country. And the role of visionary local government investing in partnership with the Arts Council has always been crucial.

If we took geography as the only consideration and allocated money solely on a per head basis, then some areas would gain but others, urban centres where cultural institutions have grown up in clusters, could lose out.

Artists often live and work where they have trained, where their friends are. Leeds is a world class centre for dance – it’s no coincidence the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Phoenix Dance Company, Balbir Singh, Yorkshire Dance, Northern Ballet are all there. That critical mass encourages collaboration, innovation and helps to create enough work to keep dancers in the area.

That’s the reason the Arts Council created a 10-year plan, to sustain the cultural ecology across England so that more quality activity can be experienced by more people.

A sustainable cultural sector requires investment that creates world class clusters where artists can flourish, spark creative synergy, and promote excellence. One of these is undoubtedly London, the home of many of our national companies and museums and the base for many companies which support artists nationally or spend time touring their work across the country.

Yorkshire is developing its own world class centres for the arts. The intention of Leeds to bid for European Capital of Culture in 2023, and Hull’s winning the status of UK City of Culture in 2017, illustrate this ambition, as does Sheffield Theatres’ title of best Regional Theatre and Opera North winning national awards.

The arts are important to rural communities too: this summer’s hosting of the Tour de France’s Grand Départ and the associated arts festival (with £1m of Arts Council investment) sees events in Skipton, Holmfirth and on Ilkley Moor.

Companies like Rural Arts North Yorkshire and the National Rural Touring Forum continue this work year round.

In response to the debate on the geographical spread of our investment, we have published a report called This England which restates the principles on which the Arts Council invests in arts and culture.

Of course we’d like to see more investment in Yorkshire – every part of the country will say the same. Sustainable change takes time but four years into our strategy, we can see the effect. National Lottery investment is making the arts available in ways they weren’t before – from brilliant galleries like Hepworth Wakefield or CAST arts centre in Doncaster to the £100,000 support to arts programmes in libraries across North Yorkshire.

We invest in response to applications, from artists, community groups and others.

We will put more effort into raising awareness of how to apply where we receive few applications, as we did in Bradford recently, and through the Creative People and Places programme, targeted to give local people the power to create the kinds of arts activity that they want in their own community.

Over the next three years, this will bring around £7.5m of additional investment to Hull, Doncaster and Kirklees.

The figures show that we still have a way to go to make great art and culture truly available to everyone, but progress is being made. With artists of the calibre of Simon Armitage, Maxine Peake and Alan Ayckbourn attracted to live or work here, there is much to celebrate.

Sarah Maxfield is Area Director North of Arts Council England.