2012: Should the Lottery Pay?
Should National Lottery funds be diverted towards the 2012
Olympics? Last week Tessa Jowell announced that the Lottery
contribution to the games had risen by £675m, taking its total commitment to
£2.2bn.
It is expected that libraries and museums will face serious cutbacks and while grants till 2009 will be protected, many groups applying for cash in the next five years are likely to be turned down.
Is this a betrayal of Tony Blair’s promise that there would be no return to ‘boom or bust funding?’
Where else should the funding come from if not from the Lottery?
It seems that every day there is another negative press story about the games. Have the Olympics become the victim of an unnecessarily pessimistic press campaign?
Or should we be celebrating the opportunity that the Olympics will offer? After all, London has a once in a lifetime chance to see massive regeneration of one of its poorest areas, which is likely to deliver benefits across the capital and the whole of the UK.
Moreover, the Cultural Olympiad is a potentially exciting opportunity. As Tony Blair said in his speech at Tate Modern, ‘We have on the horizon a four-year festival at which we can exhibit a modern, outward-facing Britain. The Olympic victory was a vindication of the cultural face we now present to the world. One of the main reasons we won is that we projected an idea of what Britain is now and what we will become in the future.’
Or is Art Fund Director David Barrie right in saying that ‘such a short-sighted raid is likely to undermine a decent cultural legacy from the Olympics, and make the Prime Minister’s celebration of a ‘Golden Age’ for the arts ring very hollow.’
Topic posted: 28 March
2007
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