Lord Best
Main Page: Lord Best (Crossbench - Life peer)Skills for Theatre (Communications Committee Report)
Lord Best Excerpts
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I am delighted to introduce this debate on the report Skills for Theatre: Developing the Pipeline of Talent. This resulted from an inquiry by your Lordships’ Select Committee on Communications, which I had the honour to chair at that time. I am grateful to noble Lords who are here to participate in this debate and I place on record my appreciation to the members of the Communications Committee, which included real experts with invaluable experience in the theatre and related creative arts. I am delighted that so many of them are speaking in today’s debate, including my successor, the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert.
On behalf of the committee I thank our clerk Theo Pembroke, who brought our report together, our policy analyst Helena Peacock and our committee assistant Rita Cohen. She was Rita Logan when she did this work but she is now Rita Cohen and I congratulate her on that change. Our thanks are also due to our specialist adviser, Professor Jen Harvie, professor of contemporary theatre and performance art at Queen Mary University of London, whose input was immensely helpful. I declare my own very modest interest as vice-patron of York Theatre Royal.
Sadly our inquiry had to be cut short, as did my term in the chair, when the unexpected general election was called last year. We could not conclude our task in the normal way, with a set of conclusions and recommendations. Instead, our report represents a summary of the evidence we received from six sessions with expert witnesses, from visits to the Royal Court and the National Theatre, and from a session with Matt Hancock, then Minister of State for Digital and Culture and now Secretary of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
The first conclusion which anyone looking at this country’s theatre will swiftly reach is that it is a huge cultural and economic success. Its quality is world-beating. It is one of the big attractions for visitors to the UK. Theatres in London last year sold a record of over 15 million seats and box office receipts topped £700 million. We heard how,
“more people go to shows in our venues than go to all league football games in the UK”.
Our successful film and TV industries feed off the theatre industry’s content, artists and technicians and theatre plays a key supporting role for the country’s wider commercial creative industries, including advertising, design and crafts. Yes, theatre in this country—especially in London—is flourishing. However, our witnesses also expressed serious worries about the future. They identified a number of hazards which, together, point to a “leaking pipeline of talent”. Will there be a continuing flow of talented individuals to sustain the brilliant success of this industry in the years to come?
The first reason for concern was around education policy. Schools in the private fee-paying sector are likely to have excellent drama facilities and teachers, and will ensure that children experience out-of-school visits to the theatre. But our witnesses worried that state schools have downgraded arts subjects, with the emphasis of the EBacc on the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Cuts to extra-curricular activities have meant children in many state schools never encounter theatre and drama. We noted that the number of students taking A-levels in performing arts and drama had declined over recent years. Although Matt Hancock told us that the number of GCSE entries had risen, there is a clear perception that the pipeline of talent is becoming ever more dependent on the affluence of parents. Tuition fees for higher education, the concentration of opportunities in overpriced London, reliance on networks of family and friends and an expectation of starting work for very low pay or no pay—despite progress by Equity in ensuring that the national minimum wage is paid—all conspire against those from less affluent households.
We heard how those barriers were compounded by a “woeful” lack of career advice on jobs in the theatre. The opportunities range from the obvious roles of acting and directing to technical areas—lighting, sound, design, wardrobe, carpentry, even wig making—and administrative areas such as stage management, accountancy, IT and fundraising. Those many and varied work opportunities in the industry were not being promoted.
Then there were the worries on the training side. Apprenticeships have not proved as helpful as the industry would like. Greater flexibility was called for, with apprenticeships needing to be tailored to the special characteristics of theatres as small, niche employers. As the committee heard, if the apprenticeship system can be made fit for purpose, it can be a great leveller. It should be a way into the theatre for a much more diverse group of young people than just those with parents who can help with tuition fees, poorly paid internships, and indeed London rents.
Many of today’s leading figures in the industry have come from less privileged backgrounds, such as John Tiffany, awarded best director last year for his Harry Potter production, who told us of his pride in his working-class roots and of his concern that, educationally and financially, opportunities were diminishing for the next generation of people like him.
Inevitably, the issue of funding was also raised with us. The contribution of the Arts Council has held up pretty well, but hard-pressed local authorities, with core services to protect, have significantly reduced funding to local theatres. Public funding remains vital for the big national companies, in effect as their R&D, enabling them to take risks. Alice King-Farlow of the National Theatre explained how famous productions such as “War Horse” and “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” were only possible—often to the benefit of the commercial theatre too—because of public subsidy.
We heard a catalogue of examples of regional theatres having to close, or being on the verge of closing. In other cases, they had stopped developing new work and putting on new productions—using locally employed actors and producers—and had become “receiving only” theatres with productions that came in and then moved on. These regional theatres play a key role in the local economy as well as in the cultural life of the communities. However, we noted how regional theatre feeds into the London scene as well, not least as the starting point for people’s careers. Sir Ian McKellen cut his teeth at the Bolton theatre, Hugh Bonneville at Colchester’s Mercury Theatre, and so on. Diminishing the role of regional theatre threatens the ecosystem for the industry and, we were told, will eventually undermine UK input into productions in the West End, on Broadway, on TV and in cinema.
We noted the hazards facing the theatre world and, since we reported, problems have of course been uncovered around sexual harassment—as highlighted by the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements—from which theatres have not been exempt. However, the committee also heard good examples of theatres compensating for financial constraints through efficiencies, fundraising and cross-subsidy from their commercial productions, as with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s hit musical “Matilda”.
The world of theatre is also seeking to counter the shift, about which we heard so much, from being an egalitarian industry in times past. The Royal Court is taking on paid trainees. The National Theatre has a target of 25% of performers from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. The RSC has its Next Generation outreach scheme with 10 regional theatres across the country. The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd-Webber, has funded a bursary in Liverpool, and I noted last week that Benedict Cumberbatch has said that he was acutely aware that he was a white male public school boy but was determined that his new production company, SunnyMarch, would in its staffing and work make a real difference in diversity in all its forms. The call from so many of our witnesses is for central government in its education and training policies and local government in its funding policies to support the efforts in the industry to draw in the talent from all our communities, to the great benefit of the cultural economy of the whole country.
Theatre in the UK is a fantastic success story and, for sure, that success has been based on attracting and sustaining homegrown talent. We hope that our report draws attention to possible stumbling blocks—educational and financial— to maintaining that flow of talent. I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Lord Best
My Lords, I thank everybody for participating. This debate unfortunately brings home to me the sad loss of my not being on the committee any longer. It was wonderful to hear my former colleagues, my successor as chair and the quartet of noble Baronesses who spoke, and indeed the contributions from those who were not part of the committee. I think that everybody endorsed the conclusions that we came to in our report. Perhaps the things that we said nothing about but which, a year on, we might have done, are the EU subjects—from the lighting issues to the loss of freedom of movement. The Minister is going to include that and tell us more about it in writing round to everybody.
It is not very often that debates in your Lordships’ House feature such notable things as Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings”, the “Fingask Follies”, “Babes in the Wood” and even bras, coracle makers and of course wig makers—we must not forget them. It was a very wide-ranging debate. All human life is here and it was well worth us rehearsing these issues. The Minister’s response attempted to provide reassurance on all the headings under which we expressed considerable concern in our report: the EBacc, apprenticeships, diversity of representation in the industry and funding, along with careers guidance. I am grateful to the Minister for those reassurances. I think we will need to look in detail at those responses and ensure that we are entirely satisfied.
I could not help but notice that today’s Times, in an article entitled “Children are being turned into mini robots”, noted:
“As millions of children begin GCSEs and A levels this week it has become clear that the number of pupils studying music, art, design, media and drama has plummeted”.
It said that entries have fallen 28% since 2010 and that,
“the number of hours arts subjects are taught has gone down by 17 per cent and the number of arts teachers has dropped by 16 per cent”.
So there are some statistics knocking about and it would be most helpful if we could study the detail of what the Minister said later.
Perhaps I may summarise everything that has been said today with two references to the debate. First, on the positive side, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, told us that we are in a golden age for this country’s theatre. I am sure that she is right and it is wonderful to be living in that age and enjoying it. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Grade, said, this debate is a unanimous declaration of fear for the future. We want to keep it the way that it is; that is what our report was about and I am deeply grateful to all those who have contributed to the debate today.