One of the defining policies of Labour’s first term was to allow free entry to some of the country’s finest museums as a way of broadening the appeal of our cultural institutions to a wider audience. On the surface it appears to have been a roaring success with, according to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the number visiting former charging national museums in England increasing by 124%. There has been criticism that the changes haven’t really opened up these institutions and merely made them cheaper for tourists and those who already visited them, reasons in particular why the Conservatives have pledged to scrap free entry. The fact remains however that more people are visiting museums and it’s hard to argue against the fact that this is a good thing.
What, however, of other cultural institutions? I ask because I am concerned that we are pricing out a generation of people on middle and low incomes from some of our most important sporting and cultural events, meaning that the people who attend often resemble as middle class an audience as you will find in any self-respecting Islington dinner party.
An example: today I tried to book tickets to see Yusuf Islam, the British singer who used to be known as Cat Stevens, embark on his first UK tour for 33 years. As a long-time fan I was buoyed with excitement up until I was quoted a price of £77 plus a £9 booking fee to see him play his only London date. Over £85 for around a 90 minute music set is an astonishing amount to charge and too much for most ordinary people to afford. I shall not go.
Was this an isolated example? It would appear not. A ticket to see Elton John at the Liverpool Arena will cost you between £50 and £100 plus a £10 booking fee. Seeing Morrissey at the Royal Albert Hall will cost you £48.00 whilst going to see relative newcomer Lily Allen in Birmingham will cost you £31.00. Naturally, going to see high profile music acts has never been cheap, but prices like these must now exclude much of the population. It is beyond comprehension how the 18% of the UK population who live in low income households could ever dream of affording such amounts.
What if instead you want to enjoy other cultural activities? As a child my parents once took me on a trip to London Zoo – the first zoo I ever visited – but I cannot image that they would have been able to afford today’s prices of £60.50 for two children and two adults. The London Dungeon would also have been out of bounds with a family ticket costing £55.00. A trip to the theatre would also be out of the question with a family ticket to a West End play like Billy Elliot costing between £100 and £150.
With the government focused on encouraging more children to get into sport as a way of combating obesity, what better incentive than to see their heroes in action? Unfortunately, a chance to see the England football team at Wembley will cost you anywhere between £29 and £58 with children allowed in for £15. This is still a considerable expense for any family. If instead you want to see the England captain play at Chelsea, a ticket to a league match will set you back between £45-65. And the days in which Tony Blair recollected going to see Newcastle United as a child might have been more difficult had his family had to pay today’s prices of £35.00 a ticket.
Having identified the problem, I won’t pretend that there are easy solutions. Indeed, with public finances tight, I doubt there would be much enthusiasm for the government to spend money increasing subsidies to the arts and sports. Moreover, some might argue that we should leave these issues to the market and that the state has no role interfering with what are often private enterprises.
However if the left is genuinely committed to equality of opportunity, shouldn’t we be worried that so many of our cultural activities are out of reach to those without substantial disposable income? Isn’t it a great waste that a future generation of musicians, athletes and actors might be lost because they never have the chance to be inspired?
As a first step the government could insist that a condition of funding from the National Lottery or Arts Council is that a set number of concessionary tickets are available for each performance for people on low-income. This could also apply to sports teams that receive government funding, including national teams.
Artists and sports stars should also take a lead. On their recent tour, U2 insisted that over 10,000 tickets were offered at discount prices to allow people a greater chance of being able to afford to go. Shouldn’t those who already have great wealth – the Elton Johns and Mick Jaggers – do the same?
In the words of a young Cat Stevens: ‘you have made your world mine, so won’t you be fair?’
You ignore one of the deeper trends underlying all of this, which is the impact of new technology on the business models underlying cultural production. Yes, actually ‘being there’ has got fiercely more expensive. But that’s to compensate for the cost of ‘consuming’ cultural artefacts remotely falling through the floor. Live events still possess scarcity, whereas recordings and copies do not.
This is what William Mitchell calls the ‘economy of presence’. As the value of communicating over time and space falls (e.g. spam) the value of communicating within time and space (e.g. attending a sports match) rises.
Museums and galleries and libraries are trying to keep up by shifting whatever they can online, within the limits of copyright. Not sure quite how London Zoo will manage to transmit elephants down cables though. So the fear is that, once the digital divide has been closed, that it will then become inverted: working class kids will experience the joys of culture via computer screens, whereas the middle class ones will stump up to attend.