Local Arts and Cultural Services

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Earl for securing this debate. I declare an unpaid interest as chair of a charity called Worcester Live, which is the main provider of the arts in the city. It runs the only theatre; the only concert hall; one of the largest festivals in the county; an outdoor Shakespeare in partnership with the city council; an indoor Shakespeare in partnership with Worcester Cathedral—last year we commemorated the 800th anniversary of the death of King John by staging Shakespeare’s play around his tomb in front of the altar; a ghost walk, which is a tourist attraction; a one-year part-time foundation course for young people wanting to get to theatre school; a number of youth theatres; and much more.

Worcester Live exists for three reasons. First, it receives generous core funding support from Worcester City Council, which, per head of population, probably contributes more to the arts than any other district council. Secondly, it has a small number of wonderful individual benefactors, trusts and patrons. Thirdly, its productions and events are well-supported by local residents.

However, Worcester Live gets not a penny from the Arts Council, and that means that its finances are constantly on a knife edge. In my view, a disproportionate amount of arts money goes to London, and a huge percentage of it goes to classical music in one form or another—orchestras, opera and ballet—and to flagship venues, a point made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy. I am far from convinced that the balance is entirely right, and I would like the Arts Council to recognise the value to local communities outside the south-east of popular non-elitist organisations such as the one that I am involved with.

I also want to mention another reason why local arts can be vibrant: the role of volunteers. There is in Worcester a splendid historical museum called Tudor House in the medieval heart of the city. It is because of the 60 or so volunteers that Tudor House is able to maintain free admission. At any one time there are about 30 of them working regularly as room stewards or in the coffee shop. Another group supports the education days, another group works as an operations committee and so on. Without volunteers, Tudor House and countless other local history museums would not exist, and they deserve better recognition from all of us. I hope the Minister will agree with me when he replies.