Make the best case you can for public funding of the arts.
Commented [SL1]: The biggest strengths of this essay are
the fact it focuses on the question throughout and handles
There are two main worries about public funding of the arts. One is that there seem nowadays to be counter arguments effectively
so many more urgent calls on public money. Isn't public funding for the arts an unaffordable luxury? Commented [SL2]: What are the arts? The writer doesn’t
The second worry is that there seem to be so many other things that are similar to the arts, but that define this.
do not attract similar public funding. Are the arts being picked out for special privileges, perhaps Commented [SL3]: Not necessarily the strongest point to
thanks to snobbery? I will try to show why, in spite of these worries, the arts remain a deserving case start but important to take into account counter arguments
for some public funding.
Let's begin with the claim that the arts are attracting special treatment. A comparison can be made
with sports. Like the arts, sports call for skill and discipline from their participants. Like the arts, Commented [SL4]: Focus on sports is odd? Not clear what
sports can be enjoyed by spectators as well as participants. Like the arts, sports vary a lot among the point they are trying to make is
themselves. Like the arts, sports are publicly funded to some extent. The main difference seems to
be, however, that while public funding of sports is usually restricted to support for participants (e.g
training of sportspeople), public funding of the arts often extends to spectators as well as
participants. One can go to an art gallery or museum for free, but one pays to go to Anfield or Brands
Hatch. Is this fair?
The answer is that the contrast is exaggerated. On the one hand, spectatorship of sports is
sometimes publicly funded. One can watch Wimbledon on the BBC for free, just as one can go to an
art gallery for free. On the other hand, not all spectatorship of the arts is publicly funded. It costs
money to go to a premier league football match, but it costs no less to see a stadium rock concert.
One must be careful to compare like with like. One should compare the treatment of niche arts with
that of niche sports, arts infrastructure with sports infrastructure, etc. One should also be careful not Commented [SL5]: Often we have to get to the middle of
to assume a purist's definition of the arts, according to which a stadium rock concert doesn't count the paragraph to understand what their point actually is.
as an arts event. That would be like claiming that football is not a sport, but only a game (sports
being limited to pursuits that involve horses and hounds!)
In general we should expect public arts and sports funding to go to pursuits that are worth
preserving but will otherwise not be viable, because there are otherwise not enough people who will
pay enough money for them, while keeping them open to others. The government should step in
where the market fails. But this brings us straight to our other worry. Surely, with so many more
urgent calls on government expenditure, support for such things as sports and arts, however
admirable, must be a low priority? They may be worth preserving, but is their preservation more Commented [SL6]: How do we determine what is ‘worth
urgent than the preservation of human lives in public hospitals? preserving’? Wasted opportunity here.
The thought here is that priority should reflect urgency. But this seems a bad principle for
government. It leads to the government thinking only about the short-term. Shouldn't the
government provide for the future, as well as coping with the present? If so, the arts, like sports, Commented [SL7]: Rhetorical questions are overused.
seem suitable for inclusion in the government's longer-term plans. The government needs to ask Elizabeth’s advice is to avoid using them. It reduces your
clarity of communication and leaves your argument out of
itself whether great achievements and great excellences can be allowed to go to waste, bearing in your control.
mind that once they have gone to waste it will be much more expensive to recreate them (or to
create replacements for them).
This argument seems to assume that a time will come when we will miss the arts or sports we have
lost. That may not be true. Few people miss Morris dancing (a nearly dead art) or jousting (a nearly
dead sport). But suppose we lost all dance-related arts, or all performance arts? Suppose we lost all
combat sports, or all dangerous sports? Then we will live in a world with fewer choices and fewer
opportunities for human beings to excel and develop their abilities, as well as for other human
beings to spectate and admire this development. One important job for governments, even if it is
never urgent, is to keep a wide variety of arts (and sports) alive for the future so that the future is at
least as full of interesting options as the present. [719 words]
