“A lifejacket from The Titanic, a dreamy blue work by Wolfgang Tillmans, a “Spectrum Jesus” painting at the Walker Art Gallery. Just some of the wondrous things and stories we tell in Liverpool.
We welcome 2.3 million visitors every year. We give our visitors free access to culture and a place to dream. Our visitors give us a reason for being. We have 16,000 of their names on a petition urging government to maintain adequate funding to the museums and galleries that they love.
We accept we must take our share of the pain in the impending public sector cull. But just sit back and accept it? I’m afraid that’s not an option.”
“There is surely no alternative. Government provision for the arts represents a miniscule proportion of overall spend. Yet the capacity of the arts to inspire, enrich and entertain on a daily basis is vastly more effective than this relatively tiny fiscal contribution would suggest.
In a grim irony for the arts sector, the immensely high profile created by such success makes the arts more vulnerable to short-term quick fixes than other areas of essential everyday activity. Britain is a nation which, more than most, has been defined by our unrivalled and wholly justified reputation for excellence in the arts.
A Britain in which the arts play a reduced role will be both impoverished and unrecognisable. ”
“It is always worth campaigning to save services accessed by the public. The arts are vital to us as civilised human beings.
There must not be a hierarchy of ‘worthiness’ of services as a result of the government’s threatened cuts, whereby one service is seen as deserving of being saved at the expense of another.
We do not accept there is a need for a single service or job to be axed – we believe there is an alternative. About £120bn in tax is lost every year, largely because wealthy individuals and organisations avoid or evade paying what they owe. If this was collected, the national debt would almost disappear.”
“It certainly is worth a campaign to save the arts. It’s a stupid question, as I think the arts are a good thing and would not like to see them lost.
But more practically, politicians (and policy advisers and newspaper editors) listen to popular opinion, so the more noise that’s made the more decison-makers and people who influence decison-makers will take notice.
And in any case, what’s the alternative? Sit back quietly and take cuts caused by idiotic hyper capitalist greed? Do we want people to stand silently by accepting the threat that many of the social and cultural gains of the last decade or so should be wiped out because of some particular dominant philosophy of macro economics? I don’t think so!”
