As a great global city and the national capital, London will and should continue to receive a higher allocation of national funding for the arts and culture than its population size alone would call for. However, at least two thirds of the UK population lives beyond comfortable cultural commuting distance of the capital. These taxpayers and their families are obliged to pay a premium of hundreds of pounds before they can access the free galleries or subsidised (or unsubsidised) performances in the capital. National cultural policy has to recognise this fundamental reality.
Christopher Gordon, David Powell and Peter Stark have decided to draw to a close the current phase of their work together as GPS Culture. We will do this on February 25th 2015, symbolically the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Jennie Lee’s ‘A Policy for the Arts: The First Steps’, still the only White Paper addressing National Policy for the Arts in the UK. By that date we will have completed two years of intensive, self-funded research into policy and practice in the support of the arts in England.
From the beginning we have intended our work to be objective, evidence based and ‘non-aligned’ politically. In the general election period we may become more directly engaged as advocates and – possibly – as parties to new policy design and implementation. There will also be other calls on our time, from the gods and – necessarily – from mammon.
As a final public contribution to this collective debate we have produced a brief summary of our reports and recommendations as ‘A New Destination for the Arts’.
-Christopher Gordon, David Powell and Peter Stark