The ENO tragedy

My production of Die Valkyrie at ENO - 2002

The latest NPO announcements were, to say the least, drastic, and there's inevitably been a lot of very vocal reaction.  It's perhaps unfortunate that so much attention has been paid to the ENO being cut, given that so many other decisions were also very impactful. However, I'm not going to apologise for yet another blog post about the ENO, because 1) it's one of the national companies and so it absolutely deserves to be debated and 2) I have skin it this game.  

I first worked with ENO back in 1998, as Assistant Director on Nicholas Hytner's famous Xerxes: a production that I've since been able to revive both at the Coliseum and in the USA. The next year, I assisted Peter Sellars on Nixon in China: and so began a friendship which has been immensely beneficial to Border Crossings. Peter has been our Patron for years, and a very active one, giving talks both in person and online, as well as offering me an artistic sounding board.  I also worked with Deborah Warner, Phyllida Lloyd (a lot!), Calixto Bieito, Atom Egoyan....  I worked with conductors who taught me how to work with music, and singers whose ability to act through the voice made me understand a whole new layer of performance.  A lot of the protest about ENO's de-funding has focused on this aspect of the company - that it develops younger artists who go on to "make wonderful international careers" - but that surely isn't the point of public subsidy. The point of public subsidy is that the work is good in and of itself - and much of what we did in the first years of the 21st century was, I believe, exceptional. I remain incredibly proud of having directed the entire Ring cycle for the company, in a staging that made sense of the text's complexity and nuance, while acknowledging its elemental power and its simultaneously mythic and human scales. 

I know that's a subjective judgement, all the more so because it's a judgement on something I directed myself. But this actually goes to the heart of the problem, which is that it's very difficult to assess the quality of art, and theatrical art perhaps most of all. Because theatre is ephemeral, you can't be wise after the event. If you produce the theatrical equivalent of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, and get the same response he did, there will be no future critics able to re-assess your genius after you've lopped your ear off. There was a time when "artistic quality" was the main measure by which the Arts Council evaluated organisations, but it proved too slippery for government, too subjective, too unquantifiable. As a result, the main criteria by which the arts are assessed, and therefore financed, have become politically volatile - with results the ENO and others are now experiencing.  

Under New Labour, the arts were instrumentalised as a catalyst for social change. Long before #BlackLivesMatter, there was a strong emphasis on supporting artists from minority backgrounds, particularly if their work was also seen to be reaching audiences from those same backgrounds. This funding priority is still significant in cultural policy, although it now sits alongside other criteria, added during the period of Tory rule that began in 2010. Encouraging arts organisations to develop as businesses is a really significant aspect of this. Think, for example, of the Catalyst programme (which we went through): a politically motivated initiative encouraging artistic companies to learn from the American model of private philanthropy, with little understanding of the very different cultural context in the US.  Think also of the consultancy firms who have been moving in on larger organisations, restructuring, prioritising and measuring the deliverables. Rishi Sunak feels like the obvious person to emerge as Prime Minister in response to recent cultural history - but it's not because he's the first Asian to lead a UK government, so much as the first person with an MBA. 

Before his arrival Boris Johnson and Nadine Dorries had thrown one more policy consideration at the Arts Council in the form of the "levelling up" agenda, and that has been of huge importance to the most recent NPO round. It sounds laudable enough in theory - the idea was presumably that deprived areas (also known as former "Red Wall" seats) should be offered cultural opportunities to match wealthier parts of the country. The problem is that this self-evidently requires more funding for culture, not less. The only way the beleaguered Arts Council could allocate more money to some localities was to offer less to others. London was particularly targeted. A cynic might point out that London, with its exceptional theatre and opera, voted overwhelmingly Remain and is almost entirely Labour. And that the cultural provision and the politics of empathy are deeply connected.

The irony of all this in relation to the ENO is that the company had actually been very good at responding to the winds of political change. There are far more Black artists and staff there. They have exceptional access schemes and educational provision for young people. Their NPO bid actually included a proposal for a new arm of the company, called NEO, to tour outside London. And they got the consultants in...  of course they did.

One aspect of the NPO decisions that has not received the attention it should is how few of the organisations now funded are actually led by artists. It used to be a given that any arts organisation existed to follow an artistic vision, and that vision was provided by an artistic leader. Not any more. Most major organisations are now led by Executive Directors, who may not have the public profile of the Artistic Director, but are in fact senior to them, and make the key decisions. Art is now subordinate to "business sense".  

So here's another irony in relation to the ENO. As Mark Wigglesworth (a former artistic leader at the company) pointed out in his excellent piece for the Guardian, ENO did what it was told and asked the consultants McKinsey to help solve the financial challenges posed by an earlier cut. The logic of the response made sound business sense - do less opera so your costs go down. As Mark says: "The idea that you could expect the same amount of taxpayers’ money for doing less of the kind of work that required it was clearly problematic." There are other possible solutions, of course. There could be more productions like my Ring: done on a smaller budget, focussing on the acting and the music. The bizarre idea that a "successful" production is one that survives for thirty years could be jettisoned in favour of a theatrical approach which responds quickly to the historical moment of performance: and this would also serve to distinguish ENO more clearly from the Royal Opera, to which it has come to seem a sad second best, rather than a genuine alternative. But these are artistic decisions, and they need artists to make them.  Sound business sense will not make art.

I hope the ENO may somehow survive - of course I do. But if it doesn't, and that seems likely, then the crucial lesson for the sector is NOT that we need to become more business savvy, but that we need to become more imaginative, and to recognise that our organisations exist to support artistic visions - not the other way round.  

Supporting the Arts and Cultural Sectors

Every picture tells a story.  This is a photo opportunity for the Chancellor and the Culture Secretary, the men in suits who have just announced the £1.5bn rescue package for culture, posing at the Globe Theatre.  In the background, on the edge of the stage, is Artistic Director Michelle Terry.  She looks as if she's not quite sure whether she's meant to be in the picture or not.

Prior to the announcement, the DCMS Parliamentary Committee asked for written evidence on the impact Covid-19 was having on the sector.  Some examples of this evidence was published online.  Ours was not - so we're publishing it here.  The evidence, written by our Chair Dr. Alastair Niven with Artistic Director Michael Walling, was prepared well before the rescue package was announced, and before the deadline for the UK to request an extension to the Brexit transition period.

DCMS SUBMISSION FROM BORDER CROSSINGS

1. Immediate impact of Covid-19 on the sector

The challenge   

The arts define the wellbeing of a society.  They are not an add on luxury, something to decorate society once other, more basic matters have been dealt with - they are themselves basic.  The current crisis does not make our cultural life something that should be put on hold until things are “back to normal”.  We have to recognise that we are undergoing a fundamental change in the way we live - we have to imagine a different future.  It will be from the cultural sector that the essential new ideas emerge.

This is why we have been disappointed by government responses so far to the Covid-19 crisis as it relates to the arts and culture.  Every part of the sector - theatres, galleries, cinemas, concert halls, opera houses and studios, as well as makers of art, performers, directors and technicians – have been left fearful of the uncertainty they face, in a perilous financial situation, and feeling deeply undervalued.  

Because the arts and culture are not just another economic sector, but are central to future thinking, to health and wellbeing, to education and development, it would be quite wrong to respond to the way Covid-19 has impacted them as if loss of earned income were the only concern.  Cultural revival has to be a priority for a healthy emergence from the crisis.  That is why we urge the DCMS to rise to its historic challenge and re-think the way in which arts and culture are seen by government.  Arts and culture are not business any more than health and education are business.  These sectors of our society require the political support that will make them universally accessible and effective as barometers of wellbeing in the Covid era and beyond.

The sector’s immediate response. 

The arts sector, and especially theatres and other places of entertainment, were the first to close under the Covid restrictions.  Most gave their last performance on Saturday 14 March, and since then they have been physically dormant.  

Theatre organisations have, however, been astonishingly and immediately pro-active and inventive in their response to the constraints brought about by Covid-19.  Streamings of past theatre productions have brought colour and humanity into the homes where almost the whole population has been confined.  Some National Theatre productions have been viewed by over a million people.  Even a smaller company such as Border Crossings has attracted audiences running in to the thousands, including international audiences who could not have seen the live original.  At a time of great suffering, it is vital to point to this positive effect, for our standing abroad has been greatly enhanced by widening around the world knowledge of what our arts sector achieves. 

Border Crossings   

Border Crossings is a theatre company founded in 1995.  Its mission, as its name implies, is to cross frontiers – not only political frontiers, though much of its work is collaborative with partners from around the world – but also the borders between cultures and art forms.  We aim to lead in intercultural dialogue between artists, audiences and communities, working principally in theatre, but also through exhibitions, film, dance and music. We regularly curate high level debates and discussions about the contribution of theatre and the arts to global civilisation (including online during the lockdown).

Every second year Border Crossings arranges a unique festival, ORIGINS, which brings to the UK cultural work of all kinds created by Indigenous peoples in other countries: for example, by Indigenous Australians, Native peoples of the Americas, Inuit and Maori.   

Our most recent theatre production is a play called THE GREAT EXPERIMENT, which is about indentured labour migrations after the abolition of slavery.  It toured intimate but adventurous spaces such as the Cutty Sark and Tara Arts.  This production made an extraordinary impact on local audiences, many of whom were originally from communities historically moulded by the circumstances being enacted on stage.  It has now been viewed globally online.  There is no theatre company registered in the UK as committed as Border Crossings to international connections.

The devastating impact of Covid-19 upon our ability to plan.   

Because of Covid-19 we have had to take tough decisions.  Next year’s ORIGINS festival is in the balance.  It is risky to plan a large scale event that depends on international travel and the gathering of indoor audiences.  The festival’s partnerships, carefully constructed over many years with national organisations such as the British Museum and the Southbank Centre, are necessarily suspended.  Similarly, our mission to send our work overseas and to co-produce plays in other countries, as we have always done, is currently paused. Our intention to take THE GREAT EXPERIMENT to Mauritius, where it is partly set, cannot be furthered until quarantine restrictions are lifted both there and in Britain.

Turning to digital dissemination, as we have done so effectively since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, may enhance our international standing, but it does nothing for our income, and it is not supported by our funders.  We are literally earning nothing during this period.

Funding threats.   

Throughout its history Border Crossings has been successful in raising funds from a broad range of external sources.  These, far more than box office income, have sustained our work.  Arts Council England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund have both assisted a variety of our projects.  We have been through two rounds of Catalyst work.  However, the pressure on ACE and NLHF in the immediate future will now, as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, make applications to either of them considerably more competitive than they have ever been. The main emphasis so far has been on ensuring the survival of flagship organisations, and this is understandable - but it should be coupled with a wider consultation around what kind of arts and cultural work should happen in the future, and how that may best be supported.  Already we have seen how the Arts Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund have shut down their project grant funds and been obliged to divert their available monies and contingency reserves into emergency Covid-19 funds.   These emergencies have very often been in companies enjoying ‘National’ status, or which were in any case in so parlous a financial situation that they required bailing out, whether or not there had been a Covid-19 crisis. This has left a well-managed, modest sized, project focused company such as Border Crossings awkwardly placed in a funding no man’s land, where we are neither big enough nor sufficiently unstable to be given emergency funds.  There is an irony in the fact that we did not appear to qualify for ACE emergency support (and so did not apply) because we had succeeded in building up a sensible and, in normal circumstances, sustainable level of reserves over the past few years.  The same good management that the DCMS has advocated is now making us vulnerable to the crisis, while some organisations that may already be bankrupt continue to be supported. 

Our scope is further constrained by the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union, which has been a significant source of funding for many projects run in partnership with other European countries, but which are now under immediate threat.  The planned withdrawal from Creative Europe and likely withdrawal from Erasmus + will be a major blow for us at a very difficult time.  At the very least, an extension of the transition period would help the sector to get through the Covid crisis before the next challenge posed by Brexit.

2. Long-term Impact of Covid-19 on the sector.

General.   

The long-term effects of this crisis are likely to be financial ruin for some, reduced opportunities to be experimental and creative for all, and constant anxiety about conforming with health requirements for audiences, performers, and all involved in the creative arts.  

Financial viability.  

With smaller audiences resulting from social distancing and the massively increased competition for financial subsidies, many arts organisations face the likelihood of their demise, whatever the quality of their work or the strength of their artistic reputation.  

Health and safety.  

Health and safety issues have been taken very seriously by all arts companies in recent years, but the challenges posed by Covid-19 are unprecedented.  Spaces will need to be adapted physically, with social distancing necessitating the removal of seats, the adaptation of toilet facilities, and the segregation of audiences. 

Training.  

Artists and all involved in productions will need specialist training in managing audiences, artists and technicians. 

The population as a whole.  

One fears desperately for all sections of the population if access to theatre and other arts is circumscribed or made impossible.  Older people fuel the economy and generate their wellbeing by their engagement with arts events.  Young people need to know their inheritances, to engage with imaginative new ideas and to encounter the best of human creativity if they are to develop as civilised beings.  

The Covid-19 crisis is a health crisis.  The arts sector believes passionately that health is not just predicated on controlling the spread of infectious diseases.  It is also about the mental health and wellbeing of all people in every community.  A society that makes the choice to exist without ready and open access to the arts, and to the means of creating art, is a sick society.  We must avoid moving in that direction.

3. Lessons to be learned from current responses to Covid-19.

Togetherness.  

John Donne’s famous words in the seventeenth century are perhaps the single most important lesson to be learned from the Covid-19 crisis.

                  ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the 

                   continent, a part of the main.   If a clod be washed away by the sea, 

                   Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a 

                   manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were.’

This is not the place to rehearse political comments on the manner in which the pandemic has been handled in the United Kingdom, nor to express views on the issue of Brexit, except in as much as our withdrawal from the European Union has cut off what has hitherto been a vital part of arts funding.  However, we can confidently assert that a global catastrophe on this scale has called for a global response.  The spread of infection has ignored state borders.  Every country has monitored the approach to the crisis taken by every other country.  Scientists and medical experts have sought to learn from each other, regardless of political differences.  Travel, migration and quarantine regulations have obliged nations to work together.  A global situation has created unprecedented global awareness.  This must be a lesson for how we all work and behave in the future.   Border Crossings has always worked collaboratively and is in a strong position to point the way to other arts companies.

Access to funds outside the UK. 

Given the limited public funds that are likely to be available to organisations like Border Crossings after the Covid-19 crisis, we implore the UK government to reconsider its position on participation in the European Educational and Cultural programmes.  This is not a political statement, but a pragmatic necessity.  It seems madness to cut ourselves off from largesse that the European Union has said can still be made available to the United Kingdom, despite our withdrawal.

Planning.

Clearly preparation for an event as large scale and global as this pandemic can never be sufficient.  It does, however, underline the value of both forward and contingency planning, at all levels and by all types of organisations.  For a small company like Border Crossings, which punches above its weight in terms of the value of its work, this can be very frustrating because our vision often outstrips our resources.  We shall ensure that a lesson learned from the crisis is that one can never over plan or be too careful with financial management and accountability.  At the same time, we may reluctantly have to be much more constrained in what we can do than we would wish to be.  After building up a such a strong reputation and track record internationally, we regard this as little short of tragic.

Since this is a global crisis, and since it has begun during the Brexit transition period, it would be wise for the DCMS to see how cultural policy in other European nations has enabled arts and culture to be far more resilient than has been the case here.  To offer just one example, the Berliner Ensemble has planned for an autumn re-opening with 500 seats removed from its 700 seat auditorium.  It has been able to do this without an increase in ticket prices, because the German government supports theatre not on the basis of a business selling a product, but as an essential part of a healthy society and polity.  The current moment offers us the opportunity to re-think our social, cultural and political structures, learning from societies that have dealt with the Covid-19 crisis well.

4. How the sector may evolve, with the support of DCMS.

Digital and online.

The move to digital and online work during the pandemic has both advantages and disadvantages.  The creative experimentation this has involved is good, with much more sophisticated use of monologues and of cross-screen interaction of performers being filmed in their own homes.  The screening of video recordings of past productions has widened audiences. However, a downside is that screened work is in the end no substitute for live performance and the physical coming together of audiences in a shared space.  The best streamed work leads to the response “If only I had been there to see it live”, and therefore reminds audiences of the value of live performance, rather than substituting for it.  Its use during the pandemic is a temporary stop-gap, not a long-term solution, and (as noted above) it brings in no revenue at all.  Even a “star” artist like violinist Tasmin Little has stated that 5 million streams over six months earned her £12.34.  If digital distribution is to be pursued as a preferred business model, then it necessitates a complete shift in funding models.

Social distancing.

Unless a truly effective vaccine against Covid-19 is found, it will be necessary at all public performances to protect audiences by continued social distancing.  This will have a big effect on the economies of all performing arts organisations and on exhibition spaces.  Those dependent on generating box office income rather than on subsidy will suffer acutely, perhaps fatally.  

Performers themselves will find rehearsing and playing in theatres difficult and in many cases impossible.  Any performance that requires physical contact between performers will be hard to achieve under current regulations.  We would therefore urge the DCMS to explore the arts as a priority area for continuous testing of personnel, on the lines being applied in football.  

Educational opportunities.

It may be difficult for the foreseeable future to organise school outings to plays and other arts events.  The DCMS can have a major role in ensuring that if young people cannot go to the events, then the events should come to them.  The number of trained groups specialising in theatre in education techniques should rapidly be increased.  DCMS support will be necessary for this.  

DCMS and the Department for Education should jointly devise an Arts in Schools Programme suitable for all levels in state education.  This should cover the teaching of the history of the arts as well as ensure that all children have access to seeing and performing live drama.

Cultural Renewal Taskforce.

We strongly support the idea of a Cultural Renewal Taskforce being established, under the chairmanship of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.  This would provide evidence that the government cares about the sector and is putting its weight behind ideas to ensure its survival.  However, we would advise the DCMS to look more carefully at the composition of this group, and recognise that the Covid crisis will require major changes across the sector.  It is  surely short-sighted to confine membership of the Taskforce to those who have managed larger organisations in the pre-Covid era.  It may well be that smaller organisations, community-based artists and those working in education will have more to offer here.

5. Conclusion.

The arts are in danger.  There has not been a comparable threat to the survival of theatre since the Puritans closed playhouses in 1642.  That period of repression lasted eighteen years.  However, on returning to the boards, plays acquired a new vitality; theatre buildings moved indoors and started using new forms of lighting and scenic engineering; female actors took on leading parts in place of boys.  A new creativity came into being, affecting writing, performing, design, and the relationship of the production to the audience.  The same may happen again when the theatres re-open after Covid-19, but it is going to be a struggle.  We believe that the DCMS can rescue the situation, but it must show imagination, foresight and flexibility.  If it does, it will be thanked in perpetuity.  If it fails to do so, then history books will write disparagingly of its inability to rise to the occasion because it was philistine when it should have been cultured, bureaucratic when it should have been civilised.  The ball is in the DCMS court.