In Manchester there's a clear correlation between a successful city, a strong cultural sector and a palpable ambition for growth
The debate surrounding the London bias of UK arts funding is getting some theoretical economic momentum behind it. The BBC's economist Evan Davis pulled out some of the bigger forces at play in his recent BBC2 documentary, Mind the Gap. Guess what: there's imbalance everywhere.
When Davis says gap, what he actually means is the vast and growing space between the UK's two economies: London and the rest. The size of the capital's economy looms over every other city. The rule of thumb in urban planning theory – that the biggest city in a country will be twice as big as the second, and so on – just doesn't apply here. It's all about accelerated agglomeration in the capital: the network, innovation and growth benefits that accrue from critical mass and economies of scale.
The transport funding differential between London and the rest, where spend per head is £2,700 for the capital but £5 per head in the north-east, knocks the arts funding differential into a cocked hat – but not before showing itself as one of the reasons why things are so complicated.
According to Davis, the only way a city outside London can develop the same pull as London is through the same approach to agglomeration: clustering, scale and hubs of talent and innovation. For him, it's already happening in Greater Manchester, and to an extent the M62 corridor: a kind of super city region stretching from Leeds to Liverpool. Apparently it's a lot like Los Angeles (except for the weather).
We may not move quickly from the rebalancing funding debate to one around the economics of agglomeration, but perhaps we should. Transposed to arts funding, that would mean building on and developing the ambition, talent and critical mass in a city until a tipping point of self-sustaining growth is reached.
I'm not so sure that we're returning to the heady days of The Creative City, where bohemians battle urban blight, but here in Manchester there's clearly a correlation between a successful city, a strong cultural sector and a palpable ambition for growth.
As a northerner, it's hard not to see an echo of a much older report on cultural funding. The Case for Capital was one of the catalysts that led to the remarkable renaissance of Newcastle and Gateshead, and the building infrastructure that's now part of the cultural fabric in what was pretty much a wasteland. Like any success story it has a mythical narrative, but by any reading, the vision came before the money, and the vision was firmly based on a cluster model.
Agglomeration can only ever be part of the answer in thinking about how public investment can stimulate cultural and artistic growth, not least because it's difficult to relate it directly to rural areas. But it's an important one because it's based on the economies of scale arising from talent and leadership in the cultural sector.
This route would create a different imbalance in the already-reductive funding per head of population figures, but there's an acceptable differential that will result from strategic policy rather than formulaic redistribution. Economics tells us that spreading resources too thinly will always restrict growth. If we want numbers, how about the number of artists and arts organisations per head of population? They're the building block of cultural growth in any unit of geography, city or otherwise. Yes, those numbers have a direct relation to investment, but the focus becomes about outcome not input, and just maybe allows for the definition of acceptable differential to be artist-led.
Of course there's a challenge to face, but the This England report (pdf)– how Arts Council England uses its investment to shape a national cultural ecology – and the response to it so far is a good start.
But back to Davis. For him, closing the gap between London and the rest is a mixture of agglomeration and connectivity; the benefits of critical mass combined with those of networks. Not a bad strategy for the arts either.
Alison Clark-Jenkins is director, north and national director of combined arts for Arts Council England – follow her on Twitter @alisoncj
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