I’m a little late to the Dowden interview in the Evening Standard.
This late discovery doesn’t change the view expressed in the previous post. If anything the interview only backs it up.
Julian Glover’s interview is a positive profile piece, seeking to project Dowden as the nice guy. The kind of Everyman the arts world strives to appeal to itself.
Quite why the DCMS brief would be described as a ‘backwater’ pre-COVID is lost on me. In the hours after Johnson’s election win last year, there was plenty Brexit-related in the arts world that demanded urgent attention. Culture and sport was at that time far more than just free tickets.
The point of the role is advocacy, surely. Loving football nor any of the other activities in the portfolio isn’t a requirement: understanding how the cultural economy functions and what the needs of its key players are is. You’re required to bang the drum. Loudly. To do that you just need to understand how the system works. You don’t need to love football, nor love opera or classical music. Bottom line: be curious how the ecosystem works then defend it and advocate it with all your heart as though your life depended on it.
And whilst there are good noises made about museums, there’s little of substance offered to live performance venues meaning Dowden has little wriggle room until the 2m rule is removed. I find the line about nobody in the arts world wanting to be paid to do nothing troubling. But hey, maybe that’s what most arts managers are thinking. Maybe I’m speaking to the wrong people. The ones I speak just don’t want their organisations to go to the wall.
I’d hoped for something a little feistier, truth be told.
