Towards a based Barbican?
Our ambitions need to be commensurately huge but grounded in reality.
Reviewing a new book on the history of the Barbican Centre (Nicholas Kenyon et al., Building Utopia: The Barbican Centre, Batsford, published 10th February 2022) caused me to return to the subject of founding dissident arts networks. Even traditional art is at this point dissident – the expression of forbidden values of family, nationalism, religious faith, aesthetic excellence and conventional beauty. Where do we go, when our museums and arts venues are in the hands of progressives who feel nothing but anger and resentment towards beautiful and illuminating art that we love? Could we set up our own Barbican Centre?
The Barbican Centre was established to provide arts and cultural services to the City of London and to the residents of adjoining residences. Opened in 1982, housing cinemas, theatres, galleries, library and conference rooms, the centre is owned and run by the Corporation of the City of London. It does not receive a direct grant from the Ministry of Culture (DCMS) nor Arts Council England (ACE). It is wholly owned and operated by the Corporation, funded by the income of the centre and income from the Corporation’s rates, rents, fees and investment. Therefore it is – at least nominally – independent of the dread hand of DCMS and ACE and their quotas on racial equality, mandatory racial awareness training and commitments to diversity.
That is rather an academic point as – disappointingly – the Barbican is just as woke and riddled with identity politics as ACE, the Tate, the South Bank Centre and the Whitechapel Art Gallery. The important truth is not that independence from government and quangos can permit artistic freedom but that it has not resulted in that in this prominent case. The individuals who manage the Barbican Centre are no different to the staff of ACE, the senior civil servants in DCMS or the directors of publicly funded venues. The point is that there is the opportunity for the Barbican to be a force for opposition to progressivist culture, however, it has not been. Why might that be?
In addition to the Barbican’s arts programme, its functions include providing facilities for conferences, trade fairs, weddings and so on. There is an attempt to balance cultural provision with purely business services, with revenue from the latter supporting the former. Even so, the centre’s management have made a point of providing serious high culture at the highest standard, especially in the field of cultural music. The inherent conservatism of the public and the appetite for popular classics is a key ingredient in programming. Consider also highly attended serious displays on modernist architecture and design, as well as exhibitions of costumes, sets and stills relating to iconic film series and directors. Not only does the centre rely on that income, it needs to retain a broad audience, cultivating an audience that attends the Barbican regularly and patronises its shops, restaurants and cafés. It cannot rely on hipsters, fashion students and trendy sociology graduates; it needs elderly ladies who listen to Haydn and watch Hamlet. Financial imperatives remain and they direct the overall management of the centre.
The artistic programming is a mixture of events that range from the commercially viable (it hosted the initial run of Les Miserables) to the artistically adventurous/worthy, which are revenue negative. The income from popular mainstream events and commercial activities (supplemented by some Corporation subsidies) allows the Barbican Centre to programme niche events, such as foreign film festivals, minority-creator exhibitions, politically directed displays. As the management of the Barbican is drawn from the caste of left-liberal metropolitan non-governing elite, it is to be expected it will unthinkingly transmit progressivist values. You would never encounter intellectual and political diversity outside of the annual Battle of Ideas; you would never expect a festival of feminism there to be followed by a season of reactionary literature.
So, what is notable is that detachment from direct control of progressivist organisations does not automatically result in the emergence of diverse views. At the Barbican we find the same type of material we could find anywhere else in London. True, we find smaller distinguished vanguard creators given more space and funding than elsewhere, but their politics and demographic profiles are dully predictable. Now, how overrun by social justice and diversity targets the Corporation of the City of London is, I cannot say. At least a little, one must assume. Simply because the managers and directors of all major organisations are products of the last fifty years of schooling and university and tainted with the assumptions of the elite, we could not expect even an august commercially responsive organisation of today to be based, reactionary or evenly coolly mercenary.
So, the priorities of senior Barbican staff and the values of the Corporation align with the governing elite’s values: multiculturalism, equality, feminism, progressivism, social justice, “diversity is our strength, comrade”. Imagine if they did not. Imagine a based Barbican Centre, where commercial activities and revenue-generating serious high culture could cross-fund festivals of Evola and Carlyle, film festivals of reactionary cinema or host an unapologetically anti-globalist drama. Imagine such events being out of the influence of ACE and DCMS, reaching not only a national but international audience. Of course, the critics of The Guardian would boycott performances and the BBC would casually slur (and carefully frame) this art centre as a hotbed of bigotry. But imagine how much fun that might be…
In practical terms, it is only by these following means that dissident culture can establish its own arts centre which stands a chance of enduring: (A) Dissidents must own the venue and property on which the venue is located. (B) The organisation – at executive corporate and managerial levels – must be resistant to subversion. (C) The venue should provide largely apolitical classic arts to a high standard and gain a reputation for reliability; this programme should be revenue neutral or revenue generating. (D) The venue should provide more challenging programmes which reflect a genuine resistance to progressive culture and transmit reactionary values. (E) A publishing arm should form synergies with venue-specific cultural events by cross-promoting and generating income through publishing books by/about the venue, resident performers and staff; resultant profits to be partly directed to support the venue. (F) A cultural journal should be established, partly to promote and discuss events at the venue; it should strive to be at least revenue neutral. (G) The venue should ideally be able to access cross-subsidisation from other commercial sources within the organisation. (H) The venue should not accept any government or NGO funding; it may take donations from any source with no reciprocal commitment; it should not endanger its independence by entering commercial partnerships that may involve any risk of political interference.
The potential is huge. Our ambitions need to be commensurately huge but grounded in reality; our assessment must be likewise realistic about the assaults such a project would face from the current governing elite.
