Some 64 days ago, each and every culture venue in the country closed its doors. From theatres to galleries, pop venues to museums, the great and the good united in their closure, in an attempt to limit the spread of Covid-19.
Yet it is only now that the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, has responded to the outbreak, forming what he refers to as a “cultural renewal taskforce”, a group of eight leaders of arts and culture who will develop guidelines to reopening the culture sector, as and when it becomes feasible to do so.
In a scathing opinion piece for The Times, Richard Morrison, makes clear the government failing in their response to the pandemic for the cultural sector. He considers the task force, who is Dowden’s words will be “instrumental in identifying creative ways to get these sectors up and running again”, is simply too little, too late.
Indeed, Morrison seems insulted by the very proposition, stating that: “There isn’t an arts organisation in the land that hasn’t been desperately thinking through every possible “creative” means of escape from looming bankruptcy during the nine weeks while Dowden has been twiddling his paperclips.”
Morrison’s own suggestion is far more logical – an immediate injection of cash, much in the same style as our cultural competitors of Germany and France. Rescue packages to the sum of billions of euros are the only thing between our cultural sector and its closure.
Morrison concludes that we have seen compared with other European nations “From our government, after 64 days, nothing except a committee for inconsequential chatter.”
