Word: sir
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Sir Roy has little patience with the conservative assertion that the arts budget takes money from the masses to fund an elitist, middle-class addiction. "All taxation takes money from a majority of people and distributes it to a minority," he says. "It's a thunderingly obvious point...The arts do reach only a minority of the population, particularly the serious arts which we fund, but I believe you can extend the reach beyond the middle-class to more ordinary people, blue collar workers, by education. What distinguishes the bourgeoisie is not a special gift from God but the fact...
SOME CHARGE THAT government subsidies encourage artists to forget the public--to become self-indulgent. But Sir Roy, who also faces calls for more participation in major funding decisions by the artists themselves, insists. "The Arts Council exists not for the artists but for the public, and to serve artists insofar as they serve the public...We have precise box office returns on every night of every show we support. We know whether it plays to full or quarter capacity and we take that into account. Not as the criterion but a criterion. You may have an experimental production which...
Since assuming his position in 1975, Sir Roy says he has sought to make the workings of the Council less mysterious to the artists and the public--which, ironically, has opened it up to increased charges of arbitrariness. "The press writes as though I glance at a list of companies and say. 'Oh, they get a grant, let's cut their grant,' and so on. Which is ludicrous...the funding procedure is complicated and laborious as it should be," he says, Each of the arts--theatre, music, dance, painting, photography and literature among them--has its own panel and group...
Artists have many opportunities to air their grievances to the assessors and the council, but Sir Roy maintains that to give them a formal vote in policy-shaping would be impossible: "They are very interested parties, "he says, "and cannot be expected to be objective and detached about their own needs, performance and rights...
...major disadvantage of corporate subsidy, Sir Roy continues, is that companies sponsor artistic activities as a way of conducting advertising and public relations campaigns. "They're not going to take a chance on a left-wing or experimental work. They don't have the same altruistic concern for the arts that public subsidy does. We could subsidize a play which attacks nuclear energy, whereas the British nuclear power companies wouldn't." In the United States, as any public television watcher knows, Mobil and Exxon are "generous" supporters of the arts...