In December 2023 the Welsh Government published its draft 2024–25 budget. The 2023–24 one was termed “A budget in hard times”. This new draft budget is subtitled “A budget to protect the services which matter most to you”. As expected, the overall budget is seriously inadequate, thanks to the Westminster government’s economic incompetence, and determination to impose continuing austerity on public services in advance of pre-election tax cuts.
Within its budget the Welsh Government, again as expected, intends to increase funding for the NHS and for local government at the expense of other heads of expenditure. Few people in Wales would want to argue against these priorities. But beyond that, among the sums allocated to non-health areas, lurk some odd choices. One of the strangest is the decision to decimate spending on the arts, culture, and heritage.
Cuts upon deep cuts
Decimate is the accurate word, if not an understatement. The minimum reduction is 10%, and some in the heritage sector are much larger. In reality, the size of these cuts is more than the official figure, since each body is already having to absorb the costs of rampant inflation over the past couple of years. And the new cuts fall on top of the budget reductions of earlier years. It’s been a long time since arts, culture, and heritage bodies received anything approaching real-terms increases in funding.
The Welsh Government seems to have done its calculations on a crude ‘decimation rule’: lop off 10% or so of the recurrent budget of each organisation. There are two bodies, though, that are due to suffer much steeper ‘fines’, reductions of almost 25%: Cadw and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Why these have incurred such special attention isn’t clear.
It’s true that the recommendations of the independent review of Cadw included much closer working between the two bodies (presumably code for amalgamation). But the structural savings from such a union will be small in relation to the money lost. Deep cuts will be inevitable in the activities of both current organisations.
Two questions need to be asked about these decisions. What are their likely effects? And what’s the reasoning behind them?
Impacts on arts, culture, and heritage
The first is the easier question to answer. The effects will be dire. The Arts Council, the Books Council, and Creative Wales (in as much as it aims to support the arts, as opposed to the economy) will be able to fund far fewer clients, so that the overall level of activity will decrease substantially. Theatre and dance companies, visual artists, musicians, voluntary arts groups, publishers, and authors – all will suffer, along with those who value what they produce.
The National Museum and National Library, already squeezed of cash over the last decade, will have to reduce still further what they can afford to do, endangering the missions of their Royal Charters. Cadw has statutory functions that it must perform, like the designation and maintenance of monuments. Other, ‘elective’ activity will diminish or cease altogether (will the Archaeological Trusts come to an end?). The Royal Commission is in an even worse position, with little ability to generate additional income.
Everywhere, staff and their specialist expertise will disappear, probably never to be replaced, while institutions will be preoccupied by restructuring and cost-cutting at the expense of carrying out their missions. A downward spiral looks likely.
And the end results? Wales, a country popularly supposed to value its distinctive cultures, will have much of the scaffolding that supports them knocked away. National and local arts activities will continue to wither. Our cultural reputation abroad will suffer, as will the experience of visitors to Wales. Our material heritage will become neglected. The quality of life of all who live in Wales will decline sharply. Opportunities and confidence among creative people, young and old, will evaporate.
In the real world
The second question, why the Welsh Government is so harsh on arts, culture, and heritage, is harder to answer. Its official ‘narrative’ for the budget says, “We have radically reshaped our budget so we can focus funding on the services which matter most to you – to invest more in the NHS and to protect the core local government settlement, which in turn funds schools, social services, social care, and other vital everyday services we rely on.”
Arts, culture, and heritage are barely mentioned, and not until page 44. There’s one stark statement: “In considering how to meet inflationary pressures, culture bodies will need to explore other sources of income.” In other words, you’re on your own.
But it’s false to imply there’s no alternative to large cuts, or that leaving those bodies to fend for themselves is necessary. For one thing, the culture budget is tiny in comparison with most others. Crippling reductions for such bodies are small change for the NHS, education, and local authorities.
Second, alternative policies are available, in the real world. The Scottish Government, despite facing much the same budget pressures as in Wales, plans to increase spending on arts and culture.
On 19 December 2023 the Deputy First Minister told the Scottish Parliament: “As the first instalment of delivering the First Minister’s commitment to double arts and culture funding, we will increase funding for culture in 2024–25 by £15.8mn. Restoring funding to Creative Scotland for utilising their reserves this year, and more. This is only the first step on the route to investing at least £100mn more in arts and culture by 2028–29. And our aim is to increase arts and culture investment in 2025–26 by at least a further £25mn.”
A lack of vision
Ireland has made the same public investment for many years. It’s played a crucial role in the remarkable flowering of cultural production there – think, for example, of the Irish novel and other creative writing – that’s the envy of other countries and raised Ireland’s status as a dynamic, modern state.
So why’s the Welsh Government so anti-culture? It’s tempting to blame thoughtlessness or indifference. But I suspect it’s even worse. At the centre of government there’s a fatal lack of understanding and vision about the roles arts, culture, and heritage play in how we live and are seen outside Wales.
It would be surprising, for example, to hear any Welsh first minister or finance minister articulate the vision expressed so strongly by the Scottish Deputy First Minister in her justification for increased funding: “Presiding Officer, our aim for opportunity is about more than economic opportunity. It is also the opportunity for individuals and organisations to realise their potential – and that is especially true of our nation’s culture. The transformational power of our culture is immense, attracting people from all over the world who want to come here and experience it firsthand.”
Anyone in the arts, culture, and heritage sectors in Wales, whose life is enhanced by them, or who cares about their social, economic, and health benefits, should be deeply concerned. By a government whose members can’t seem to grasp the critical importance of maintaining and improving state support for such bodies.
And more so than ever at a time of economic difficulty and hardship, not less. They should rethink their priorities before it’s too late. They call this a budget “to protect the services which matter most to you”, but why assume that the arts, culture, and heritage don’t matter much to you, or our country?
