Blogs

The UK parliament’s House of Lords Science and Technology held an inquiry in 2013 on Scientific Infrastructure.  Their report was positive, but argued that the UK lacked a long-term strategy and investment plan for scientific infrastructure; and failed to provide adequately for operational costs at facilities.

The report also recommended a more active role for the UK in developing EU infrastructures.  There were concerns that the benefits of Public Sector Research Establishments (PSREs) in providing national capabilities and acting as custodians of data, expertise and facilities, was being  eroded by an over-emphasis on profit margins and uncertainty over long term funding.

The UK government has now responded and has announced a consultation on long term science and research capital and an advisory group that will inform a roadmap on long term science capital – this is seen as a central element of a Science and Innovation Strategy to be published in Autumn 2014.  The UK Research Councils also provided a short response.

The UK is seeing ongoing active debate on regional/national funding allocations for arts and culture, mentioned in a previous post.  Rebalancing our Cultural Capital - a 2013 analysis of inequalities in public funding - has now been joined by A Simple Proposition from the same authors (Stark, Gordon and Powell) and a Response from Arts Council England (ACE) annotated by the authors.  Also from 2013 was Where is Private Investment in the Arts Going? from Arts & Business. 

These issues of geographical inequities and transparency were explored at the UK Museums Association Conference in 2013 with a presentation by David Anderson (video, summary and commentary from Maurice Davis of the MA).

A more general think tank view of economic rebalancing is found in Transforming the Market: Towards a New Political Economy (Patrick Diamond, 2013, published by Civitas).  This perspective argues for the rebalancing of the UK economy in both sectoral and geographical terms, with an emphasis on economic issues, but including creative industry, some aspects of education and the idea of moral balance in political terms.

The UK parliament's House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee has announced an inquiry (likely to hear evidence in March 2014) to look at the Work of Arts Council England - a general investigation but including economic and artistic criteria that underpin funding decisions, and seeking views on "whether the geographical distribution of funding is fair and the justification for the current weighting of this towards London".  A short debate (skip to 2.30 p.m. in the link) on Regional Arts and Culture took place in parliament on 4 February 2014 in Westminster Hall in which parliamentarians explored the issues and heard the response of the minister responsible for culture.

A strong emphasis in these discussions is funding for performing arts and fine arts, with some attention to museums as part of the arts and creative sectors. There is not yet a lot of inclusion of broader cultural capital in terms of public experience and engagement of the humanities, social sciences or natural sciences, or the work of libraries, heritage organisations and others.