Spend more on arts during depression

Published: 8 April, 2011

• STEPHEN Poliakoff and your writer Peter Gruner are right to criticise the destructive cuts in arts funding in Islington (Poliakoff criticises theatre funding cuts, April 1). 

I am old enough to have seen the very first production, Mr Joyce Returns to Paris, at the King’s Head Theatre. This pioneer of pub theatre has sadly expired even before the present financial crisis. 

I was taking my four-year-old and myself to the Little Angel, as well as introducing the theatre to parents and childless adults who delighted in it during the latter 1960s and later. 

I was in at the birth of the Almeida, fascinated by the bizarre history of the premises which were converted to a theatre. 

Even the more “modest” cuts are to be deplored. In many cases, the loss is irreparable – just as is the loss of rare craft skills when the National Trust is forced to retrench. And of course the same or worse obtains elsewhere in the country.

Arts funding was greatly increased  (CEMA, ENSA and the Arts Council) while we were bearing the brunt of total war. 

In this period of depression, expenditure on the arts should rise, just as the cost of unemployment benefits increase. 

During the 1930s depression, as Orwell attested, public libraries were a refuge. 

They should not be closed, although they should return to their status as a haven of peace and sanity instead of the barbarous hell holes of shrieking parents, armed with their wretched mobiles.

We also need a return to a rule of near silence. It used to be automatic that library staff spoke in hushed voices and children came to read – not to make libraries an extension of the playground. (Where there’s a mobile there’s a moron, usually loudmouthed.)

PITAO
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