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The arts are under threat, but culture is vital for any community and must be safeguarded, argues Claire Fox. May is Museums and Galleries month. Throughout the country there are hundreds of special exhibitions, late openings, debates, and a general buzz. Well done all of you who help invaluable museums and galleries to thrive. But before I pat you on the back, can I issue a warning? A crisis looms. Widespread cuts mean local repositories of historical artefacts could themselves soon be consigned to history. In the 2006 survey of the National Association of Local Government Arts Officers (NALGO), 75% of respondents reported cuts. NALGO's Paul Kelly has predicted, ‘incremental cuts over several years are now threatening the very fabric of local authority arts provision'. One LGA report tells us that ‘revenue… is budgeted to fall significantly by more than one-fifth (21%)'. This means death by a thousand cuts. Infamously, Bury sold a Lowry painting for £1,408,000 to plug a financial gap in other services. Last year, the Art Newspaper reported Ipswich Museums Service appeared not to have insured its collection of paintings, including Gainsboroughs and Constables, ‘due to cutbacks in local authority support'. And in November, the Museums Journal reported the threatened closure of Berwick-upon-Tweed museum in a bid to save £200,000. Of course, the arts in some areas are thriving. But Gateshead's success story with the Sage and the Baltic does not change some startling statistics. According to John Holden – in two papers which should be compulsory reading for chief executives and councillors* – ‘more local authorities are joining a year-on year trend of abandoning the arts altogether'. Twenty-five authorities have cut arts services completely in the past five years. Thanet, Somerset, Cotswold, Windsor & Maidenhead, Maldon, Congleton and Fenland are expected to cut theirs or make their arts officer redundant. My plea is, don't do it! The arts may be non-statutory, but they are too valuable to kill off. You might expect me to trot out the usual arguments for why councils should support the arts. I should tell you that everything, from concert halls to sculptures, will help deliver LAA outcomes in social inclusion, healthy communities, engaging young people, teenage pregnancies and economic regeneration. But, to be honest, I wouldn't expect to convince you. This kind of instrumentalism – arguing for culture only as a means to an economic or social end – has backfired. It means culture has to find funding from other budget holders, rather than having an autonomous budget. Culture is a public good in its own right, but even arts officers seem to have forgotten this. If you only value a painting because it can tackle unemployment or improve self-esteem, you have no idea what it's really worth – as art. So, how can I convince authorities to value the arts? First, imagine a society without art, music, literature, drama, museums. Your constituents can't. In a YouGov poll last December, ‘cultural heritage' ranked top of the things of which most people are proud – 82% want a museum or art gallery in their vicinity. Then, let me pose you a challenge. Take advantage of Museums and Galleries month. Look at a painting. Take off your bean-counting hat. Don't judge it by asking what it's for or how it can be used – just look at it. Give it a try. n Claire Fox is director of the Institute of Ideas. * Local authorities: A change in the cultural climate? Demos, 2006, and Funding decentralisation in the UK cultural sector: How have we done so far? Arts & Business, 2007

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WHITEHALL

Keeping art in the picture

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