The arts world is heaving with conflicting currents as the New Year unfolds. On the one hand are the Arts Council’s drastic financial shufflings, which may fatally wound the Early Music Network, City of London Sinfonia and London Mozart Players. On the other is Sir Brian McMaster’s freshly-minted report on supporting excellence in the arts, which is described in this month’s ‘Newsround’.

Sir Brian is a wise fellow, and his report is splendidly thoughtful: his recommendations echo many of the ISM’s own ideas. Inevitably, there are the usual truisms about art and artists; and we suspect that Sir Brian himself wouldn’t claim to be advancing a host of vastly original prescriptions. In itself, that doesn’t matter: despite what our legislators tell us, ‘new’ is not always synonymous with ‘good’, and old ideas can often be the best. So if endless repetition of an argument, with the odd variation, is the only way to persuade politicians to do the sensible thing, then so be it.

There is one quite sparky notion, however: the proposal that for one week a year, all admission prices should be removed from publicly funded cultural organisations. Well, yes and no, Sir B. It risks putting artists on the same level as animals in a zoo – fit for the occasional expedition, to be gawped and giggled at, but leaving them as little more than curiosities. This will undoubtedly happen if no effort is made to make ‘high art’ (for want of a better term – and it is hard to find one) part of the general backcloth of life in school and home. We see little sign of that. Rather, the converse appears to be the case, under the guidance of relativists who advocate monotony, magpie-ism and mental poverty under the banner of ‘engagement’.

A better route is reported elsewhere in this issue. In ‘Places’, there is a piece by Tom Hammond about an outreach project organised by Jackdaws Educational Trust, under the guidance of Maureen Wishart. Schoolchildren were closely involved with Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale, working with it for weeks and making it their own, exploring it from the inside out, rather than treating it as though it were some extra-terrestrial oddity. The success has been huge. Look on this, O policy-makers, and learn.

Sir Brian also has a go at the old chestnut of artistic risk-taking. Fair enough. But subsidy systems, by their very nature, are risk-averse; and even if a board decides to be bold, the bean-counters may think they know better. However high the hopes at the start of the voyage, the likelihood is that the ship will run aground on the shoals of nit-picking (accountability… public benefit…) and political expediency (if a wizard wheeze needs more money, other pockets soon get raided – Olympiads, anyone?).

It is hard not to conclude that the government, which has spent years impaling itself on a culture of targetry, to an increasingly furious chorus from its clients, has decided to call in one of the great and good to help it off the hook. What may now happen, however, is that fresh sets of measures will be developed, initially paying lip-service to the joys of innovation etc, but gradually showing their true philistine selves, and we shall end up in another quagmire. A different-smelling quagmire, perhaps, but a quagmire nonetheless. The real answer, which is staring everyone in the face, is for artistic and educational entities – whether universities, conservatoires, schools, orchestras or whatever – to be extricated from the coils of the state’s bureaucracies. That will take real ingenuity, boldness and determination. Who has it?What exactly is the government playing at?

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