News and Policy brief - January
Crafts Council News and Policy briefing - 19th January 2010
Contents
1. Culture in an election year: policy developments
2. Higher education: reports, responses, funding, policy announcements and debate
Craft Council responses:
• Research Excellence Framework by Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)
• Post-graduate Review by Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)
• Craft, Design and STEM subjects
• Research Councils UK report on the sustainability of the academic workforce
3. Arts and Humanities Research Council: public policy survey
4. NESTA work on innovation in the arts and creative industries
5. CC Skills funding from Future Jobs Fund
6. Heritage Crafts Association: survey of makers
1. Culture in an election year: policy developments
At the start of what will certainly be an election year, the major political parties have begun to publish more details about their policy commitments. We may have to wait some time for any concrete announcements on cultural policy, but there have been some hints in interviews with the relevant spokespeople. Interviewed in December on the BBC’s Hard Talk, Ed Vaizey would not rule out cuts in the culture budget but said that a Conservative Government would seek to ensure that the axe fell on quangos, not front-line arts organisations. Pressed to say which ones, he argued that Arts Council England was too big and could be slimmed down, citing the changes at the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) which, he said, had shed half its staff without any discernable impact on its work. Vaizey seemed to go further in these comments than in previous remarks made by him and Jeremy Hunt, which had promised only to look at the efficiency of Arts Council England. The staff reduction at MLA has been achieved by abolishing its independent regional agencies and centralising its work under one board, although it is not clear how far Vaizey intended to press the analogy. Watch the full HARDtalk interview on BBC iPlayer.
Writing in Arts Professional magazine, Don Foster, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport re-emphasised his party’s commitment to localism and to devolving decisions about spending wherever possible. He also asserted his belief that culture should be freed from the burden of box-ticking and that decisions about funding should be taken at arm’s length from Government.
We can expect more detail about cultural policy commitments in the coming weeks. Two high-profile events may offer some insights. On 14th January, Arts Council England and the RSA organised a conference, State of the Arts, at which Ben Bradshaw and Jeremy Hunt both gave keynote presentations. In March, the National Campaign for the Arts is hosting an arts hostings, with Margaret Hodge, Don Foster and Ed Vaizey all speaking and taking questions.
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2. Higher education: reports, responses, funding, policy announcements and debate
Higher education seems to be retaining a high profile in policy terms, with several important developments this month.
Responses by the Crafts Council
The Crafts Council has responded to consultations on the new Research Excellence Framework (REF) and on the Postgraduate Review being carried out by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
As reported in the December briefing, the Crafts Council contributed to an initiative by the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (CHEAD, the organisation that represents all institutions that provide higher education in art or design) to produce a joint response to the consultation on the REF. The Crafts Council also wrote to HEFCE separately. The main focus of this letter was to endorse the CHEAD response, but the Crafts Council also emphasised the strategic importance of craft research in higher education to the whole of the craft sector and expressed the view that the sector is vulnerable and under threat. It also emphasised a point made in the CHEAD response about the way that fractional (that is, part-time) staff are counted by the REF. This may seem a technicality but the interchange between research in higher education and studio practice is crucial to innovation in the craft sector and the Crafts Council wants to ensure that funding mechanisms reflect this. Read the full response here.
The response to the Postgraduate Review focused on the Review’s third theme, the relationship between postgraduate provision and business, employment and skills. The Crafts Council’s response argued, firstly, for the importance of investing in the creative industries and, secondly, for the need to take a broad view of the creative industries. As we have argued before in these briefings, Government policy for the creative industries too often focuses on new media and not on the broader sector, including crafts. Read the full response here.
A more fundamental concern is, of course, that higher education serves a broader purpose in society than simply training people for work. It encourages critical thinking, provides a catalyst for innovation, deepens our understanding of what it means to be human and helps knit together the fabric of society. At a time of economic constraint, it is more important than ever not to lose sight of the full breadth of higher education’s significance. As reported in December, the Government’s University strategy takes a narrow view of higher education, with an emphasis on serving the needs of a relatively small business sector. This was underlined by the Government’s letter to HEFCE, giving funding guidance for the settlement universities for 2010-2011. The letter set out cuts of £135m in HEFCE’s budget for university funding. These cuts are in addition to those announced in the pre-budget report and, according to a report in the Times Higher Education supplement, will amount to a 12.5% reduction in universities’ budgets over the next three years. Such deep cuts will inevitably be of serious concern to anyone working in HE and indeed the broader craft sector. The letter also re-emphasises the Government’s policy of concentrating HE spending in priority areas, that is those industries expected to deliver economic growth.
For the full text of the letter, please visit the HEFCE website.
Creative & Cultural Skills has announced the appointment of Julian Crampton, vice-chancellor of Brighton University, as a skills ambassador for the organisation to help build better links between the creative sector and HE. This could be a crucial appointment at a difficult time for creative subjects within HE.
There has been much public debate on the Government’s emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects within HE. Speaking in the House of Lords in December, Baroness Sharp of Guildford emphasised the economic importance of the creative and cultural sectors and questioned the weight given by the government to STEM subjects within its higher education strategy. Writing in the Guardian on 15th December, Elaine Thomas argued that design was as important to the economy as science and technology and should be regarded as one of the STEM subjects. We agree with her analysis, although not with her conclusion: the Crafts Council believes that the emphasis on STEM subjects is misplaced and that the Government should take a much broader view of what subjects are important to the social as well as economic well-being of the country. We responded to the article arguing that STEM subjects are only one part of a complex innovation jigsaw. Read the full article and the Crafts Council’s response here
Research Councils UK report on the sustainability of the academic workforce
Research Councils UK (RCUK), the body that represents the seven bodies that fund research in UK universities and allied institutions has published the results of research into the nature of the UK’s academic workforce, with the aim of helping universities and others understand more about the how to ensure there is a sustainable supply of academic staff for the future. The report’s figures are from 2003/4 to 2006/7 (or to 2007/8 in some cases) and the following statistics may be of interest to colleagues in the craft sector:
• Between 2003/4 and 2007/8, the number of academic staff across all subjects rose by 14%. The Creative Arts and Design saw the third highest percentage growth, with a 27% increase.
• Creative arts and design had one of the older age profiles of academic staff, with more than 20% of all staff aged 55 and over. This was a higher than average percentage, but comparable to other practice-based disciplines such as education, as staff are expected to have practiced for some years before becoming academics. There was also an increasing percentage of staff over 60 over the 4 years from 2003/4 to 2006/7.
One of the report’s conclusions is that the sector needs to consider whether this growth in staff numbers is sustainable at a time of funding pressures. For the full report visit the Research Council UK website.
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3. Arts and Humanities Research Council: public policy survey
At a time when the position of arts and humanities research seems somewhat beleaguered, it is important to demonstrate that one of the ways that research in these fields has an impact is by shaping public policy. The Arts and Humanities Research Council is conducting a survey which seeks to demonstrate this impact and if your research work has been significant in this way, we encourage you to respond and you can do so at the AHRC website.
4. NESTA work on innovation in the arts and creative industries
The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) is undertaking work to establish how innovation happens within the arts and creative industries. We welcome this work, which brings NESTA’s focus nearer to our sector, although the report focuses on publicly
funded arts organisations and innovation in terms of programming rather than in individual artists’ or makers’ work. More information can be found on the NESTA website.
5. CC Skills funding from Future Jobs Fund
Creative & Cultural Skills has secured funding of £1.3m from the government Future Jobs Fund to create 200 entry-level jobs for unemployed young people under 25. The six-month long jobs will include Theatre Technician, Costume and Wardrobe Assistant, Community Arts Officer and Business Administrator. Although the nature of the craft sector makes it more challenging to find a fit with these Government initiatives, we welcome any moves to make entry to the creative and cultural sectors more achievable for a wider range of people. We are however more optimistic that the funding for apprenticeships secured by the NSA will provide opportunities for the craft sector. For more information please visit the Creative & Cultural Skills website.
6. Heritage Crafts Association: survey of makers
The Heritage Crafts Association is undertaking a survey to help it understand how it can develop to serve the needs of traditional crafts people more effectively. To read more and to complete the survey visit the Heritage Crafts Association website.
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