James Blunt being a legend again.

Heartfeltdawn

dchwhite said:

It's possible to attend a public school & still be working class. I assume it's to do with public schools having a charitable legal status, but they do generally have a small number of free or nearly-free places each year for children from unmoneyed backgrounds who can pass the entrance exams.

That is indeed the case. 

Drew_fx said:

The rest of the UK gets much more than London does, which is odd considering London has the most galleries and the most artists living in it.

• £689 million will go to the arts in London. This equates to £81.87 per resident in London.
• £900 million will be invested in the rest of England, which it says is equal to £19.80 per capita.
• Overall, there is a balance of 4.1:1 in favour of London, the report concludes.

 People like the deputy mayor for education and culture of London would point to per visit subsidy as another measure of looking at the funding distribution. Ruddy statistics can be jiggled all manner of ways. I do think things are going in the right way though with more partnerships and sharing going on. 

Drew_TNBD

Heartfeltdawn said:

dchwhite said:

It's possible to attend a public school & still be working class. I assume it's to do with public schools having a charitable legal status, but they do generally have a small number of free or nearly-free places each year for children from unmoneyed backgrounds who can pass the entrance exams.

That is indeed the case. 

Drew_fx said:

The rest of the UK gets much more than London does, which is odd considering London has the most galleries and the most artists living in it.

• £689 million will go to the arts in London. This equates to £81.87 per resident in London.
• £900 million will be invested in the rest of England, which it says is equal to £19.80 per capita.
• Overall, there is a balance of 4.1:1 in favour of London, the report concludes.

 People like the deputy mayor for education and culture of London would point to per visit subsidy as another measure of looking at the funding distribution. Ruddy statistics can be jiggled all manner of ways. I do think things are going in the right way though with more partnerships and sharing going on. 

Some interesting figures here too:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/187405/response/461492/attach/html/2/ACE Funding by Region.xlsx.html

Total up the non-London figures and compare them to the London figures. Of the money that the arts council dishes out, London gets a smaller portion than the rest of the UK. Does it get a larger portion than Thanet? Yes, of course. Does it get a larger portion than Coventry? Certainly. But if you're making the split across London and non-London lines, then London gets less.

Heartfeltdawn

Yes, London gets a smaller portion than the rest of the country combined, just as I said above which is why other statistical elements like per capita funding is important. The GPS Culture study is pretty good. 

John_P

Drew_fx said:

Heartfeltdawn said:

dchwhite said:

It's possible to attend a public school & still be working class. I assume it's to do with public schools having a charitable legal status, but they do generally have a small number of free or nearly-free places each year for children from unmoneyed backgrounds who can pass the entrance exams.

That is indeed the case. 

Drew_fx said:

The rest of the UK gets much more than London does, which is odd considering London has the most galleries and the most artists living in it.

• £689 million will go to the arts in London. This equates to £81.87 per resident in London.
• £900 million will be invested in the rest of England, which it says is equal to £19.80 per capita.
• Overall, there is a balance of 4.1:1 in favour of London, the report concludes.

 People like the deputy mayor for education and culture of London would point to per visit subsidy as another measure of looking at the funding distribution. Ruddy statistics can be jiggled all manner of ways. I do think things are going in the right way though with more partnerships and sharing going on. 

Some interesting figures here too:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/187405/response/461492/attach/html/2/ACE Funding by Region.xlsx.html

Total up the non-London figures and compare them to the London figures. Of the money that the arts council dishes out, London gets a smaller portion than the rest of the UK. Does it get a larger portion than Thanet? Yes, of course. Does it get a larger portion than Coventry? Certainly. But if you're making the split across London and non-London lines, then London gets less.

Interesting figures - on that table, the most recent data has nearly 43% of the grants being in London.   A quick google suggests that London has about 13% of the UK population  link    While I can see how the capital will have more arts, that seems a higher proportion of funding than I would expect even if you include the surrounding region.

Jalapeno

Fretwired said:

There's nothing wrong with going to Oxbridge. That said I think those that represent us should come from all walks of life and not a narrow band. It seems that Oxbridge PPE graduates with little experience of the real world get the top jobs. We need more people like Alan Johnson (postman and union leader), Michael Heseltine (ran a large business), Norman Tebbit (fighter pilot/airline pilot), Paddy Ashdown (army officer), John Prescott (merchant seaman and union leader) in parliament. Cameron, Clegg and Miliband are basically the same.

Wisdomed.  Dennis Skinner is another.

This is why the few such as Nigel Farage and even BoJo stand out far above the rest - they have done something other than politics and are able to relate to "normal" people.

digitalscream

Moe_Zambeek said:

I'd like to see where arts funding goes. In my uneducated opinion a lot seems to go a. In London rather than the regions and b. On what the 'cognoscenti' consider arts, i.e. Their preferred form of entertainment - theatre, opera and ballet, rather than on grass-roots anything.

I believe you can simply go to the Arts Council and ask.

There was an interesting case recently, where one of our local music festivals was bitching about the Arts Council refusing them funding and slagging them off left, right and centre. Thing is, my dad's other half works pretty high-up in the Arts Council, so I got the real story of what happened...it turns out that a non-negotiable requirement for them to put their hands in their pockets was for all the musicians to be paid a fair rate for their appearance at the festival; the festival refused, so there wasn't any money for them.

This is, apparently, quite a common occurrence. It's not that they don't want to fund festivals and the like, it's that not many organisations want/can afford to pay people for what they're doing.

Incidentally, I've also discovered that the Arts Council are even open to the idea of putting up funding for individual bands for albums and/or tours, if they can put a good enough business case forward.

Drew_TNBD

Heartfeltdawn said: Yes, London gets a smaller portion than the rest of the country combined, just as I said above which is why other statistical elements like per capita funding is important. You do understand how this reads right? "Oh yes, when you look at it that way, London gets less.. but if we twist it a little, we can easily make it look like they more than they deserve" ... that's how it sounds anyway. Like you said earlier.... statistics can be misused.

Basically, London gets the high proportion of funding because it applies for it. The rest of the country doesn't apply as much, and therefore gets what it is asking for - which is less.

Now *if* you had a constant stream of non-Londoners asking for funding and constantly being denied it, then you might have a case that London is unfairly receiving that money. But to my mind that isn't what is happening.

Heartfeltdawn

Drew_fx said:

You do understand how this reads right? "Oh yes, when you look at it that way, London gets less.. but if we twist it a little, we can easily make it look like they more than they deserve" ... that's how it sounds anyway. Like you said earlier.... statistics can be misused.

Basically, London gets the high proportion of funding because it applies for it. The rest of the country doesn't apply as much, and therefore gets what it is asking for - which is less.

Now *if* you had a constant stream of non-Londoners asking for funding and constantly being denied it, then you might have a case that London is unfairly receiving that money. But to my mind that isn't what is 

If I thought London was getting more than they deserved, I would have said so. Statistics can be twisted either way, as the Guardian link showed in discussion for both sides. 

Yes, London gets less as a whole. Yes, it gets more per capita. At no stage did I say that London gets too much money or that it was unfairly weighted in favour of London. I even said that things were going in the right way with more partnerships etc.

freakboy1610

Politics aside, I found this comment from Bryant's reply amusing: "Stanley Baker, the son of a disabled miner in the Rhondda, who rose to be one of Britain’s greatest film actors (Zulu), would have found it even harder to make it today." Zulu came out in 1964 and Stanley Baker died in 1976. Surely he could have come up with a slightly more contemporary example?
|)

Philly_Q

freakboy1610 said:

Politics aside, I found this comment from Bryant's reply amusing: "Stanley Baker, the son of a disabled miner in the Rhondda, who rose to be one of Britain’s greatest film actors (Zulu), would have found it even harder to make it today." Zulu came out in 1964 and Stanley Baker died in 1976. Surely he could have come up with a slightly more contemporary example?
|)

If he wants to use "Welsh actor" analogies, Michael Sheen, the son of a personnel manager from Port Talbot, seems to have done OK for himself.  But maybe he's a bit too middle-class, eh?

Jalapeno

Philly_Q said:

If he wants to use "Welsh actor" analogies, Michael Sheen, the son of a personnel manager from Port Talbot, seems to have done OK for himself.  But maybe he's a bit too middle-class, eh?

Evilmags

The best way to encourage the arts is to stop heaping onerous regulation on venues.