“What do you do,” an Avenue Q song so nearly began, “with an MPhil in Old Icelandic?” Become CEO of Arts Council UK, if Alan Davey’s record is anything to go by. Davey studied at Merton College before embarking upon a career in the Civil Service that has taken him to the top of the UK’s department for the allocation of arts funding.
After a spell in the Department of Health, Davey took up a position in the newly created Department of National Heritage in 1992 (the word ‘culture’ was considered too left-wing for the then Conservative government). “It was set up as a really small department, and had some of the cleverest people from the Treasury there. There were lots of brainy people around trying to think of new ways to run a department, and it was really exciting at the time. Now the culture department is just like any other government department, which is a bit of a shame because it could have been different.”
The Arts Council has a great deal of responsibility in allocating the resources for the production of art as well as directing its practitioners in how best to serve the public. There’s a danger of creating a tension between these two strands: the current ten year plan is titled ‘Achieving Great Art For Everyone’. I question how the Arts Council ensured that accessibility was not confused with popularisation – how to go about preserving the quality of art whilst at the same time widening participation. “There’s always been that tension in the arts council; are we going to go for access or are we going to go for excellence, and at times in its history it has been polarised. I’ve always been against that,” says Davey.
“It’s setting in train the conditions by which great art can happen. Someone working in the community with young people can produce great art and I’ve seen wonderful stuff. Someone working in an opera house can also produce great art. They’re different, but the authenticity of ambition makes it genuine. What we’ve found is that it can be quite simple; if you’ve never been to the theatre before, for instance, it becomes quite a frightening mystery. And how can we make people able to discover it more easily? Always without dumbing it down. It’s about saying to people, ‘Well, try it, and we’ll help you understand it’.”
Earlier last year playwrights David Hare and Mark Ravenhill attacked post-recession theatre programming, worrying that producers were playing it too safe when it came to choosing plays. “It’s something that I’m worried about,” says Davey. “We saw it happen in the eighties, and people started to do productions that they thought were safe, surefire box-office hits, or very cheap productions. Like Educating Rita, a two person play, I mean, it’s a good play, but it was everywhere! Theatres got into a spiral of decline, because audiences were finding it less interesting, so the box-office fell and the entire economic model began to collapse. What we’re observing this year if you look at the programmes of all the theatres, is a certain safeness creeping in, and I do think we have to address that now.
“What we can never do in the next few years is replace the government cuts, because we simply can’t afford to. We can help theatres look at their business models more closely, but always keep the art interesting because that keeps audiences interested.”
The cabinet minister with responsibility for culture, Maria Miller, quickly came into the media crossfire after her appointment. And it isn’t hard to see why: Miller is Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and is also Minister for Women and Equalities. In addition to the furore over arts cuts she’s been responsible for overseeing post-Leveson legislation and is also at the heart of the gay-marriage debate, not to mention fighting a burgeoning expenses scandal concerning her second home.
I ask Davey if he thinks this is simply too many plates for one minister to spin. “I think it’s doable if you’ve got the department ordered in the right way. All of her responsibilities are capable of creating a huge interest all at once. You ignore them at your peril. She’s still new in the job, and she’s got to find a way of attending to all of them with the right amount of attention. She shouldn’t be afraid of the culture sector, because it really wants to help. We’re good at culture in this country. We need to work with her to give her the means to do her job better.”
