Written evidence submitted by Arts Council England

              Contents

1              Executive Summary             

2              How Arts Council England supports art and culture             

3              The economic picture across music             

4              How Arts Council England supports music             

5              Secondary ticketing             

6              Music education

1.0              Executive Summary

1.1               Arts Council England is the national development agency for arts, museums and libraries in England. We invest public funds in great art and culture for everyone, boosting our world-leading creative industries, the UK’s global reputation, regional regeneration, education, health and wellbeing.

1.2              Live music is often interpreted to mean contemporary popular music; however, England’s musical landscape is wide and varied. Across a broad range of genres, styles and situations, there are a wealth of opportunities for people of all backgrounds to enjoy, perform and make music. Our country has a worldwide reputation for musical quality and innovation, from top selling popular artists, jazz and world music, to our internationally renowned orchestras and opera companies.

1.3              Our investment in music comes through many different funding programmes amounting to around £100m each year.

1.4              We seek to support and develop the art form across all genres. The business models, their context and challenges can often be very different between, for example, brass bands, orchestras, south Asian music, traditional folk song, and contemporary popular music.

1.5               The economic picture in contemporary popular music in particular is changing. Challenges include the low wages and earnings large numbers of individual artists face, as well as demographic and technological changes which have put business models for small festivals and small venues under financial pressure.

1.6              While the Arts Council’s investment is relatively small compared to the total value of the music sector in England, we seek to make appropriate and meaningful investments that support innovation, diversity and access. We want to see our investment reach a wide range of people and exploit music’s ability to transcend social and cultural backgrounds.

1.7               While our funded organisations generally have policies in place to deal with the secondary selling of tickets, this remains a challenge for larger organisations. The committee may wish to consider whether legislative action is required to prevent the re-selling of tickets for venues in receipt of public funding

1.8              Since 2012, the Department for Education and the Arts Council have invested over £425 million in a range of music and cultural education programmes including Music Education Hubs, In Harmony and a network of National youth ensembles for our most talented young musicians.  The Arts Council continues to champion the Cultural Education Challenge, aimed at creating a step change in the way in which children and young people access cultural education and address barriers to participation. It delivers Artsmark, the Arts Council’s flagship award to encourage and celebrate high quality arts and cultural education within schools.

1.9              Working alongside our network of Music Education Hubs, funded by the Department for Education, our National Portfolio Organisations and Youth Music make a strong contribution to developing musicians of the future, supporting the delivery of high quality music education for children and young people, and offering a broad range of talent development pathways.

2.0              How Arts Council England supports art and culture

2.1              Arts Council England champions, develops and invests in the nation’s culture. Between 2015 and 2018, we invested £1.1bn from government and an estimated £700m from the National Lottery.[1]

2.2              Our work is directed by Great art and culture for everyone, our 10-year development strategy for the sector.[2] We invest through three main strands:

• National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs), the backbone of England’s cultural infrastructure.
• Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants, our rolling, open access grants programme[3].
• Arts Council England Development Funds, to target specific gaps, challenges and opportunities.

2.3              We invest £75m p.a. from the Department for Education in 120 Music Education Hubs.

3.0              The economic picture across music

3.1              DCMS currently estimates music, performing and visual arts in the UK is worth £ 8.2bn GVA to the UK economy and employ 291,000 people[4]. UK Music research[5] suggests that in the same year the music industry alone was worth £4.1bn GVA to the UK economy, with Live Music making up £904m of this and employing 25,150 people.

3.2              A large part of this value is likely to come from the contemporary popular music genre. However these healthy numbers mask considerable challenges for small businesses and individual artists working in the genre.

3.3             In common with much of the creative industries, a large number of artists in the music sector earn comparatively low amounts and often supplement their income by working in other jobs. Large returns are made by the small percentage of artists who sell huge amounts of records and/or tickets.

3.4             Whilst these artists may have made use of a grass roots infrastructure in attaining success, it is unclear if the value of their success is being felt further down the supply chain.

3.5              As commercial businesses, grassroots venues staging contemporary popular music face growing financial pressures. These include increases in rent, utility bills, insurances, and business rates as well as issues relating to planning and noise abatement.

3.6             The rise in digital distribution of audio visual content has increased the ways in which audiences are able to access new music. BPI recently estimated that audio streams account for over half of all music consumption[6]. Small music venues are competing for the attention and custom of audiences with a wider range of potential activities than has been the case in previous decades.

3.7              Small venues staging live music play an important part in supporting emerging musicians and acts as platforms to hone their craft and develop their audiences. The business models of these venues rely on strong attendance and drinks sales to be economically viable. When either of these is affected it leads to the threat of unsustainability and the potential for unsuitable practices such as ‘pay to play’ or the requirement that bands bring a minimum number of audience members through the door.

3.8             Venues in receipt of public funds are generally required to perform a number of functions to develop their art form. In particular they are required to take a much more active role in talent development, audience outreach, educational activities, and increasing diversity of their audiences and workforce.

3.9             We welcome the Orchestral Tax Relief and look forward to seeing it have a positive impact in the way the Theatre Tax relief has done for the theatre sector. The committee could consider whether other parts of the live music sector would benefit from similar processes.

4.0              How Arts Council England supports music

4.1              The Arts Council invests more than £100m each year in music, through our National Portfolio, Project Grants and Strategic Funds, in addition to £75m in Music Education Hubs

4.2             Our investment is a small part of the total value of the music sector in England. It is essential that the public funding we invest is used in ways that clearly deliver social value by widening access to culture, promoting innovation, or improving diversity workforces or audiences.

4.3             In the 2015-2018 National Portfolio Arts Council England invested £79.8m each year in 94 Music organisations.

4.4             In the 2018-2022 investment round our NPO investments in music will rise to £90.5m each year in 102 organisations with a primary focus on music. A list of the full proposed 2018-22 National portfolio can be found on our website.[7] 

4.5             In addition to major companies such as the Royal Opera House and Opera North, the National Portfolio includes eight symphony orchestras across the country, promoters such as Jazz North, festivals like Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and venues like Turner Sims in Southampton. Their work goes much further than their mainstage concert activity. Many of them have developed and high-quality education programmes making a significant contribution to our work with children and young people and partnering with various music education hubs. Many also have wider outreach programmes that work with diverse communities

4.6             We support a large number of music projects through our Project Grants programme. In 2016/17 we invested £9,722,336 in 561 music projects. A further £3,106,531 was invested in projects with a partial focus on music.

4.7              Examples of recent Project Grants projects include an investment of £7,500 in Solihull based Birmingham Jazz for their Legends Festival in May 2017, and £15,000 in Chester based composer Gary Lloyd’s Mirror of Love production at St Mary’s Creative Space in Chester.

How we support contemporary music

4.8             Taking contemporary popular music specifically, between 2018-22 Arts Council England will invest £27,211,355 each year in NPOs with a whole or partial focus on popular music. Last year we also invested £1.9m through our Project Grants programme in popular music projects.

4.9              Several music organisations working with contemporary popular music will receive National Portfolio funding for the first time in 2018-22. These include:

• Capsule Events, who produce live events and showcase international and home grown talent in Birmingham
• Loud In Libraries CIC which offers opportunities to watch bands in libraries across the country.
• SoundCity, a festival of live music and arts, capturing the city of Liverpool. They will use Arts Council investment to put in place a talent development programme across the north of England.
• NTS Live, an online radio station based in London with studios in Los Angeles, Shanghai and Manchester. Broadcasting underground music live, 24/7. Their funded talent development programme will see them develop a number of diverse artists every year.

4.10              Other small venues we’ve supported through our National portfolio are:

• Norwich Arts Centre – Winner of the NME’s 2014 Best Small Venue award, it’s funded for its wider programme including support for talent development, outreach work and work with children and young people

• Café OTO – funded directly for its live music programme, it’s focus on experimental and niche genres of music, including support for talent development, contributes to ensuring less commercially viable forms of contemporary popular music remain vibrant

4.11           Arts Council England has directly supported small venues through our Strategic Touring programme, for example:

• De La Warr Pavilion in East Sussex recently received £289,165 for a project called OUTLANDS that will create a new regional touring network for experimental music. Ten venues, producers and promoters will work together to commission and tour three new productions each year over two years.
• The Met, Smaller Rooms Music Touring – over the course of three years, a consortium of five venues based in the North West toured 12 emerging acts with the aim of developing audiences and skills and knowledge in music programming

4.12          We have undertaken a number of steps to encourage contemporary music applications including:

• Producing a bespoke advice sheet for popular music Project Grants applicants.[8]
• Proactively delivering advice surgeries on how to access our funding at industry events.

4.13          We proactively look for opportunities to support the art form. The South East Music Network is one such example. Our work on this has resulted in a successful bid to our Strategic Touring programme to develop audiences for experimental music in a variety of venues across England as well as several Project Grants applications, for example from The Boileroom in Guildford.

4.14          In recent years we have invested strongly in bespoke schemes for the music industry such as Momentum, in partnership with PRS for Music Foundation. The fund provides vital financial support for talented artists and bands to take their career to another level. Many of the artists supported through Momentum will perform and support small venues. You can see which artists have been funded on the PRS Foundation website[9].

4.15          The Arts Council’s investment in the International Showcasing Fund (ISF), which we set up with PRSF and British Underground, offered vital support for artists, bands, songwriters and producers based in England, Scotland and Wales who have been invited to play an international showcasing festival or conference. ISF is a partnership between Arts Council England, PRS Foundation, Department for International Trade, British Underground, the Musicians’ Union, PPL, Creative Scotland, Wales Arts International and Arts Council Wales. 55 British bands were at this year’s SXSW festival, 36 have been directly supported by ISF and a further 15 have had Arts Council support (directly or indirectly) in previous years.

Arts Council support for small venues

4.16          Small music venues can play an important part of the ecology of developing new talent and sustaining the success of the UK’s music industry. They also provide social value through provision of cultural space which can attract and encourage a young and diverse audience.

4.17          We have been able to support a number of applications benefitting small venues, because they offered opportunities and development for artists, demonstrable plans to reach out to new audiences, and increasing diversity of artists and audiences. Our support for small venues has included:

• offering funding, such as that listed below,
• supporting networks such as the London Mayor’s Music Taskforce or the inaugural Music Venues Day from the Music Venues Trust,
• providing better information on our funds for venues and artists,
• and using our local Relationship Managers to provide advice to the sector.

4.18         Venues we have previously invested in (for their wider programmes, engagement and reach) include:

• Band on the Wall, an NPO who also received small scale capital funds in 2016 develop the venue
• More Music in Morecambe, who received small scale capital investment in 2016 to renovate building to become multi-use and better engage the local community
• The Stables in Milton Keynes
• Cecil Sharpe House, a venue which houses the English Folk, Dance and Song Society in London
• Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Centre in London, which is focussed on South Asian music
• Colston Hall in Bristol
• Roundhouse in London, a venue which has a significant talent development programme for emerging young artists and bands
• Rich Mix in East London.

4.19          Through our Project Grants funding programme we have supported Independent Venue Week four years in a row. We funded The Great Escape in Brighton over a number of years, and have awarded many other grants to artists and organisations of various scales across the country.

4.20        We are aware there are issue of access with many live music venues. Our funding of Attitude is Everything specifically supports development in this area, particularly via their Charter of Best Practice and toolkit offering knowledge, guidance and best practice examples.

4.21          The challenges facing grassroots music venues are a combination of societal and economic factors which Arts Council England funding on its own will not be able to solve. It is likely that many venues applying for our programmes would need to adapt their business models to offer the returns to public investment given by venues listed above. There is potential for venues to play a more active role in many cases. This could include:

• stronger talent development,
• offering artist development schemes,
• make rehearsal space available,
• or providing space for creative start-ups.

4.22         The committee may wish to consider how the music industry as a whole could work collaboratively and strategically to identify what steps will help the long-term future of grassroots music venues. The Arts Council is keen to play a full role in such a process within the parameters of our remit.

5.0              Secondary ticketing

5.1              In common with other live venues, some venues receiving Arts Council investment face problems related to secondary ticketing.

5.2                       Our funded organisations have generally put in place methods of tackling this issue. However there is support amongst larger venues for more to be done on market abuse from ticket touts. Rectifying mis-sold tickets is a direct cost to them if another ticket is provided, as well as potentially damaging their reputation when customers arrive for popular performances with tickets which have been resold at grossly inflated prices. Occasionally such customers discover that they cannot be admitted or that they have paid a very high price for a ticket that is far from the stage, has a restricted view or involves bench seating.

5.3                       Where ticket re-selling sites are breaching the terms of conditions of funded organisations several have requested reimbursements. However where such sites are based in foreign legal jurisdictions the cost of action can be prohibitively expensive.

5.4                       A major challenge for some arts venues is that they are general admission rather than seated. This makes it especially difficult for them to police secondary ticketing and takes up much staff time to rectify when problems do occur. Often proposed solutions such as dynamic pricing are also not available to general admission venues.

5.5              The committee may wish to consider whether legislative action is required to make ticket touting illegal for cultural events presented by registered charities and/or funded through public money. Similar approaches were taken for example at the 2012 Olympics.

6.0              Music Education

6.1              The Arts Council believes that art and creative subjects should be seen as equal to other subjects.

6.2              The Department of Education’s recent GCSE and A Level data shows a decline in students taking creative subjects.  The percentage of pupils entering at least one arts subject decreased in 2017, by 1.5 percentage points compared to equivalent data in 2016 to 46.5% [10] of pupils in state-funded schools.

6.3              Durham University and Arts Council England have announced The Durham Commission on Creativity and Education which will make recommendations addressing cultural education policy and industrial strategy in England. The report will also focus on support for practitioners within the education and cultural sector.

6.4              In addition to the work of the Durham Commission, the Arts Council is also working with De Montfort University on developing a pilot scheme which will explore the potential of a 25-Year Creative Talent Plan, designed to offer creative opportunities at critical life stages for children and young adults, both in schools and extra-curricular activities.

6.5              Another programme Arts Council have supported in this area is Cultural Citizens[11]. 642 young people aged 11-14 from in Barking and Dagenham, Birmingham, Liverpool and Blackpool took part. Many had never previously taken part in art and culture, and were predominantly from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Music Education Hubs

6.6              Following the 2011 the National Plan for Music Education 123 Music Hubs were set up across the country, and commenced operation in 2012. In 2015/16 there were 121 Music Education Hubs in operation.

6.7              MEHs include schools and other educational institutions, as well as arts and music organisations. They work in geographically defined regions in order to provide opportunities for children to learn instruments, play and sing with others and for musical talent to be developed.  MEHs ensure there is provision across a range of genres, with, for example, 4106 rock bands, 1670 wind bands and 368 folk ensembles supported by MEHs in 2015/16.   

Youth Music

6.8              Another major way we invest in music for young people is our investment in Youth Music. This is a national charity investing in music-making projects for children and young people in challenging circumstances. 2.8 million children and young people have taken part since 1999. 76% of Youth Music investment is awarded to projects in the 40% most deprived areas of the country. We’ve just announced a further investment of £38.4 million of National Lottery funding into Youth Music between 2019 and 2022.

6.9              Since 2012, 70 Music Education Hubs have received £8.5 m for projects through Youth Music.  The Arts Council has asked the charity to ensure that every Music Education Hub is supported by the projects it funds, especially in deprived areas.

March 2018