Nationalizing the 'Creative Industries

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Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 13(1), 2003, 15–32

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DOI: 10.1080/1048680031000077834

Nationalizing the ‘Creative Industries’

Jen Harvie

In his influential book,

Imagined Communities

, first published in 1983,Benedict Anderson argued that communities form by imagining them-selves.

1

Because all of the individuals who perceive themselves asbelonging to a community – such as a nation – may never meet, theirsense of shared identity is produced not by

knowing

they share certaincharacteristics, histories and values, but by

imagining

they do. Com-munity is, thus, a cultural practice. It is both produced through thecultural practice of imagining, and influenced profoundly by the variousshared cultural practices people participate in daily, in everyday andspecial situations. One of Anderson’s chief examples of such a sharedcultural practice is newspaper reading.

2

Reading a newspaper can givethe sense that one is part of a larger community of readers who share theevents it reports, the times it chronicles, and the languages and frames ofreferences it uses, and who all, to some degree, define ourselves in termssuggested by the paper, whether consciously or unconsciously, andwhether we define ourselves according to those terms or against them.Newspaper reading clearly illustrates Anderson’s argument, but allcultural practices can contribute material and means for communities tobe imagined.

This article asks how theatre in the United Kingdom contributes tothe imagining of communities, or social identities. It focuses on howtheatre practice in the UK is affected by the theatre infrastructures – forexample, buildings, funding patterns, programming, promotion, and soon – which are in part produced by government ideologies and policies.It is important to consider theatre as material cultural practice – whereand how it happens, for whom, in what ways – because its meaning andthe imaginings it facilitates are not, of course, simply a result of itstextual practice – what it is about, the language it uses, how it isstructured. And it is important to consider theatre in broader politicalcontexts because those contexts can prove extremely influential inhelping and hindering theatre’s making and its effects, especially itssocial effects, my main concern here.

1. Benedict Anderson,

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

(London and New York: Verso, [1983] revised edition 1991), pp. 6–7.

2. Anderson,

Imagined Communities

,pp. 32–36.

03 CTR 13-1 Harvie (JB/D) Page 15 Tuesday, April 1, 2003 1:32 PM

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Since New Labour’s election in 1997, the Government has imple-mented cultural policies that have already had profound consequencesworth examining. Two of the most significant are its policies supportingdevolution and ‘re-branding’ the ‘creative industries’. Devolution obvi-ously holds the potential to significantly alter the dominant paradigmsthrough which communities imagine themselves, but whether this haspositive or negative effects is widely debated. Does it, for example,facilitate the democratic, pluralist expression of identities, or does itimpose or homogenize identities? And how has its introduction affectedtheatre practice? New Labour’s re-branding of art and culture as the‘creative industries’, likewise, holds the potential to alter the culturalpractices through which communities imagine themselves. Does it, wemust ask, conceive culture as commodities rather than as acts, and canculture be meaningful thus conceived? How has this re-branding affectedtheatre? Further, what are the effects of introducing these new policiesof devolution and ‘creative industries’ coincidentally? Does eachexacerbate or mitigate the other’s effects, how, and with what socialconsequences?

The latter part of this article concentrates on the contemporarysituation under New Labour. In order to contextualize New Labour’scurrent devolutionary emphasis on nations, however, the first part castsback over the twentieth century post-war to examine how theatrepractice has previously been conceptualized and organized throughother ideological/geographical paradigms, especially metropolitanismand regionalism.

3

It argues that these paradigms – though of coursesomewhat variable in their social effects – have had several potentiallydamaging outcomes. The metropolitan model has limited democraticcultural expression by favouring the centre, and worked to denigrate theregional by setting it up as the metropolis’s devalued binary opposite.While ostensibly more democratic, the regional model has potentiallymasked an enduring metropolitanism as governments have endeavouredto ‘professionalise’ – or ‘raise’ to metropolitan standards – regionalpractice.

New Labour’s devolutionary policies, with their emphasis on nations,may help to displace these formerly prevalent asymmetrical metro-politan/regional models, but are their effects necessarily more demo-cratic? Or do they effect expression that is exclusive – attempting toimpose a unified identity – or even imperialist, attempting to imposeidentities beyond the limits suggested by territory? Further, how is NewLabour’s emphasis on devolved nations affected by its coincidentalemphasis on the ‘creative industries’? Certainly, this new phrase hassinister connotations – marginalizing social culture by concentrating onthe more neutral ‘creativity’ apparently practised in autonomous isola-tion, focusing on the economic ‘benefits’ of commodities rather than thesocial effects of cultural acts and agents, and contributing to theimperialist spread of economic globalization.

4

But just because theseconnotations are sinister does not mean they have all been realized.Indeed, evidence suggests that in some situations, theatre planners andpractitioners have exploited the government’s interest and investment inthe ‘creative industries’ to produce opportunities to make and distribute

3. Post-war theatre history has been outlined in some detail by many critics, for example: John Elsom,

Post-War British Theatre

(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), George Rowell and Anthony Jackson,

The Repertory Movement: A History of Regional Theatre in Britain

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), and Dominic Shellard,

British Theatre Since the War

(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999). What I aim to do by considering it in this context is to focus on what identities it produced for itself and/or had imposed on it, and to evaluate some of those identities, ideological effects, especially in relation to the current context.

4. Several recent publications analyse the increasing commodification of culture, a trend which certainly pre-dates New Labour’s 1997 election. For a detailed and insightful analysis of British theatre’s commodification, see Baz Kershaw, ‘Discouraging Democracy: British Theatres and Economics, 1979–1999’,

Theatre Journal

, 51:3 (October 1999), pp. 267–283. For a cultural studies emphasis see, for example, Timothy Bewes and Jeremy Gilbert (eds),

Cultural Capitalism: Politics After New Labour

(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2000), and for an emphasis on cultural policy see Clive Gray,

The Politics of the Arts in Britain

(London: Macmillan, 2000). Jim McGuigan’s

Culture and the Public Sphere

(London: Routledge, 1996) provides a useful


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theatre practice that is impressively socially aware and democratic. Thelatter part of this article attempts to evaluate some of the actual culturaleffects of New Labour’s current emphases on the ‘creative industries’and devolution – or, more accurately, nations – by examining twoagencies whose work can be seen partly as outcomes of these emphases.These are the British Council and its work exporting ‘Cool Britannia’,and the new Scottish National Theatre planned by the Scottish Executiveand the Scottish Arts Council. These case studies demonstrate that thereare certainly reasons to be wary of the anti-democratic effects of NewLabour’s cultural policies. In different ways, they also provide salutaryreminders that oppression seldom achieves total dominance and peoplecan and do resist cultural subjugation, making opportunities for demo-cratic, effective expression and imagining to take place.

‘FEW, BUT ROSES’: METROPOLITANISM AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Divisions and disparities between British regional and metropolitantheatre certainly pre-date the end of the Second World War, but withthe post-war expansion of government support for the arts

5

and theformation of the Arts Council of Great Britain they were enforcedinstitutionally in new and significant ways, bringing with them associa-tions – or imaginings – of superiority and elitism for the metropolis andinferiority for the regions. In the immediate post-war period, publicpolicy aimed initially to get ‘the best to the most’,

6

maintaining theregional distribution of theatre set up during the war. Despite the ArtsCouncil’s initial good intentions, however, this aim was first compro-mised by market forces which public policy failed to challenge, and thenwas effectively abandoned by the Arts Council in a radical revision inpolicy to support ‘few, but roses’, with the roses in question beinglocated, not surprisingly, in and around the metropolis.

The Arts Council of Great Britain was created out of the Council forthe Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), formed during thewar to provide entertainment and to foster arts practice in Britain.Initially, the Arts Council maintained CEMA’s complementary aims todistribute the arts widely and to decentralize arts provision,

7

especiallythrough providing support to a handful of regional repertory theatres.

8

Although the organizational model adopted by the Arts Council wouldprove to be influential – defining regions, channelling limited resources,and effectively permitting or preventing arts practice in any given area– the Council did not devise its own purpose-built model. Instead, itrather passively adopted CEMA’s model, with a headquarters in Londonand twelve regional offices distributed throughout the UK according toa plan devised during the war for the purposes not of arts provision, ofcourse, but of civil defence.

While not purpose-built, this model of regional provision waspresumably better for supporting theatre practice distributedthroughout the UK than no model at all would have been. However,what it could provide – and therefore its ability to challenge associations

broader context. The literature on globalization and its effects is enormous and growing. See, for example: John Beynon and David Dunkerley (eds),

Globalization: The Reader

(London: The Athlone Press, 2000), and

Malcolm Waters,

Globalization

(London: Routledge, [1995] revised edition 2001).

5. Janet Minihan argues that ‘in a single decade, during and after the Second World War, the British Government did more to commit itself to supporting the arts than it had in the previous century and a half.’ Janet Minihan,

The Nationalization of Culture: The Development of State Subsidies to the Arts in Great Britain

(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1977), p. 215, quoted in Gray,

The Politics of the Arts in Britain

,p. 38.

6. Andrew Sinclair,

Arts and Cultures: The History of the 50 Years of the Arts Council of Great Britain

(London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995), p. 62.

7. Simon Trussler,

The Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 303.

8. Shellard,


, p. 6.


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of the regional with inferiority and the metropolitan with superiority –was compromised by a variety of economic factors that the Arts Councildid little to alter. Although the Council ensured the presence of regionaltheatre, it did not ensure that this theatre would be informed by andresponsive to its local audiences or that it would, in other words,facilitate pluralist, democratic expression. For many reasons, much post-war theatre throughout Britain was fairly conservative, investing intried, tested and somewhat standardized productions dominated bymetropolitan tastes. In his book on British culture in the Cold War,Robert Hewison argues that post-war Britons’ hunger for culture andtheir nostalgia for a time before the war meant that, in the theatre, theywere fed a steady diet of revivals.

9

Conservative, standardized program-ming was further enhanced by censorship (which lasted until 1968); afew managements’ near-monopoly control of theatres and their produc-tion;

10

and a ten per cent entertainments tax instituted in 1917 to raisewar revenue (and reduced in 1948,

11

but not abolished until 1958)which only served to intensify the overall economic conservatism alreadypresent in the theatre.

12

Whether these impediments contributed directly or not, the ArtsCouncil soon abandoned its policy of taking ‘the best to the most’ – apolicy that was rather paternalistic in the first place. Generous touringpolicies quickly declined,

13

the regional offices were gradually closeduntil all were gone by 1956,

14

and what little investment the ArtsCouncil did make in theatre went increasingly to metropolitan institu-tions like the Covent Garden opera house, Sadler’s Wells, and the OldVic. By 1948–49, for example, the opera house took one quarter of theArts Council’s entire annual budget.

15

Defending the Council’s changein policy, its Secretary-General William Emrys Williams asked in 1951,‘Might it not be better to accept the realistic fact that the living theatreof good quality cannot be widely accessible and to concentrate ourresources upon establishing a few more shrines like Stratford and theOld Vic?’

16

In response to his own rhetorical question, he proposedthat the Arts Council ‘may decide for the time being . . . to devote itselfto the support of two or three exemplary theatres which might re-affirm the supremacy of standards in our national theatre’.

17

Hesummarized this policy in the phrase ‘“Few, but roses” – including, ofcourse, regional roses’, the final clause offering little consolation tothose any more distant from London than Stratford.

18

By 1956, thispolicy of supporting metropolitan arts and ignoring regional ones wasthoroughly entrenched: ‘The Arts Council believed then, that the firstclaim upon its attention and assistance is that of maintaining inLondon and the larger cities effective power houses of opera, music anddrama; for unless these quality institutions can be maintained the artsare bound to decline into mediocrity’.

19

Not by accident, then, thenumber of theatres throughout the UK plunged in the 1940s and 1950sfrom around 1,000 to fewer than 500.

20

Seen by many in this period asnepotistic, unaccountable, and cliquish,

21

the Arts Council in its firstdecade entrenched a bias of superiority, priority and indeed produc-tivity for the metropolis and one of inferiority and inactivity for theregions.

9. Robert Hewison,

In Anger: Culture in the Cold War, 1945–60

(London: Methuen, [1981] revised edition 1988), p. 9.

10. Andrew Davies,

Other Theatres: The Development of Alternative and Experimental Theatre in Britain

(London: Methuen, 1987),pp. 138–139.

11. Ibid, p. 148.

12. John Elsom, ‘United Kingdom’, in Don Rubin (ed.),

The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre

, Vol. 1,

Europe

(London and New York: Routledge, 1994),pp. 890–920 (p. 893).

13. Geoff Mulgan and Ken Worpole,

Saturday Night or Sunday Morning? From Arts to Industry – New Forms of Cultural Policy

(London: Commedia, 1988), p. 20.

14. Robert Hutchison,

The Politics of the Arts Council

(London: Sinclair Browne, 1982), p. 118.

15. Davies,

Other Theatres

, p. 146.

16.

Arts Council Annual Report 1950/51

(London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1951), p. 34; quoted in Robert Hewison,

Culture and Consensus: England, Art and Politics since 1940

(London: Methuen, 1995), p. 80.

17. Quoted in Sinclair,

Arts and Cultures

, p. 88.

18.

Arts Council Annual Report 1950/51

, p. 34; quoted in Hewison,

Culture and Consensus

, p. 80.

19.

The First Ten Years: Eleventh Annual Report

(London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1956), quoted in Mulgan and Worpole,

Saturday Night or Sunday Morning?

, p. 20.


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‘THE BEST TO THE MOST’: REGIONALISM IN THE 1960S AND EARLY 1970S

Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, the discourse of arts provi-sion in Britain shifted its emphasis from ‘civilizing’ – understood to beachieved by offering select, elite, metropolitan-based culture to a few –to a more democratic emphasis on socializing, achieved by offering ‘thebest to the most’. Practically, this meant the arts received greater govern-ment investment, particularly in order to increase distribution bycreating more regional theatres, especially ones intended to producetheir own shows rather than acting as receiving houses for touring work.Ideologically, the preceding pattern of promoting the metropolis anddenigrating the regions as provincial began to be eroded as a campaignof regional – especially civic – repertory theatre building spreadthroughout the UK, responding to and fostering regional civic pride.Nevertheless, this model of arts provision was not without its weak-nesses, two of which were its inherent paternalism and, given itsemphasis on creating a physical regional theatre infrastructure, itsvulnerability to rising material costs. Thus, while the regional theatreswere more thoroughly established throughout the course of this period,their effectiveness in actually facilitating autonomous, devolved culturalpractice was always questionable. By the end of this period, theirconfidence – and regional pride with it – was damaged, and the metro-politan/regional hierarchy, while perhaps temporarily inverted, was noteradicated.

The ideological shift from elitism to socialism that characterized thisperiod was heralded by the Labour appointment of Britain’s firstMinister for the Arts, Jennie Lee, in 1964. Lee was committed todistributing more art while upholding quality. She ‘wanted to level upnot down’,

22

maintaining grants to existing ‘centres of excellence’ whilefostering the wider diffusion of excellence. She succeeded in persuadingGovernment that the Arts Council needed increased subsidy to achievethis aim, trebling the Council’s grant in six years to see it rise to £2million by 1970.

23

As her biographer Patricia Hollis observes, ‘Most ofJennie’s new money went not into London’s national companies, butinto Scotland, Wales, and the regions (no one talked about the “pro-vinces” in Jennie’s presence)’.

24

Lee’s thinking and her ministerial policyclearly influenced the Arts Council’s practice, despite her arm’s-lengthrelationship to it. From the late 1960s throughout the 1970s, theCouncil’s rhetoric ‘repeatedly declar[ed] that “the balance of provisionbetween London and other regions” [was] one of its main concerns’.

25

The greatest legacy of the rise in theatre funding in this period is thenumber of theatres it converted and built. This building policy wasadvocated by the Government-commissioned

Housing the Arts in GreatBritain

report, published in two parts in 1959 and 1961,

26

and wassupported by the Government’s Capital Fund, established in 1965 ‘toassist towns in building or renovating theatres’.

27

Critics vary in theirestimates of just how many theatres were created in this period, but theirstatistics point unanimously to a prevailing national ‘edifice complex’.Anthony Jackson speculates that, between 1958 and 1970, ‘twenty new

20. Elsom, ‘United Kingdom’, p. 896.

21. Mulgan and Worpole,


,p. 20.

22. Patricia Hollis,

Jennie Lee: A Life

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 250.

23. Hollis,

Jennie Lee

,p. 250. See also Elsom, ‘United Kingdom’,p. 900. Theatre’s economic fortunes were also improved by its liberation from entertainments tax in 1957 (Hewison,

In Anger

, p. 168).

24. Hollis,

Jennie Lee

,pp. 250–251.

25. Anthony Jackson, ‘1958–1983: Renewal, Growth and Retrenchment’, in Rowell and Jackson,

The Repertory Movement

, 89–129(p. 113). Jackson does not give a precise reference for the quotation he includes but it is likely an

Arts Council Annual Report

, probably that of 1980/81.

26.

Housing the Arts in Great Britain

,

Part I: London, Scotland, Wales

(London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1959),

Housing the Arts in Great Britain, Part II: The Needs of the English Provinces

(London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1961).

27. John Elsom,

Post-War British Theatre

, p. 132.


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theatres had been constructed, fifteen of which were designed specifi-cally for repertory’.

28

Other critics, working with broader definitions,conclude that about a hundred new theatres were created from the late1950s to the mid-1970s.

29

In line with Lee’s and the Arts Council’sincreased emphasis on regional provision, this expansion in theatrebuilding was, as Jackson notes, ‘even more a regional than a Londonphenomenon: no less than thirty-four of the [forty] new theatres [builtby 1980] were situated in the English regions, in Scotland and inWales’.

30

Admittedly, construction finally began on the NationalTheatre on London’s South Bank during this period, but not until as lateas 1969. A decade earlier, in 1958, it was a regional theatre, Coventry’sBelgrade, which set the pace for theatre building in Britain by becomingthe first purpose-built repertory theatre to open in Britain in twentyyears.

31

Regional theatre flourished in this period on an unprecedentedscale.

Of course that does not mean it facilitated devolved democraticexpression. Indeed, Lee’s ‘best to the most’ mission statement bespeaksa Government desire to import to regional theatres metropolitan stan-dards at least and, most likely, metropolitan productions and play textsas well. Further, the way regional theatre flourished – in prominent bignew buildings – brought its own set of problems. Securing funding forthe construction and maintenance of theatre buildings regularlycompeted with attaining funding for actual theatre practice. Pointing outthat Britain’s local authorities often collectively provide more subsidy totheatre than the Arts Council does, Geoff Mulgan and Ken Worpoleargue that, in 1963, ‘forty-three per cent of [local authority] expenditureon “entertainment” was on the upkeep of buildings’. Spending on actualarts provision went first to concerts and art exhibitions and ‘[s]pendingon “theatre” came an insignificant fourteenth’.

32

Theatre practicecertainly still existed – and in some cases thrived – but it faced anotherserious problem in 1973–74; namely, the OPEC-led quadrupling of oilprices and, so, of heating costs.

33

Characteristically featuring bigwindows, spacious, high-ceilinged lobbies, and generously-proportionedauditoria, the new regional theatres were particularly vulnerable to thisincrease in cost, all the more so as inflation continued to rise, reachingover twenty-five per cent per year by 1975.

34

By this time, ‘the increasesin annual Arts Council grants were unable to keep pace with inflation’and the press increasingly began to depict the regional theatre complexesas ‘white elephants’.

35

So while Lee and others did much to improve the profile and actualmaterial circumstances of regional theatre throughout this period, theydid not necessarily ensure its productions would provide opportunitiesfor democratic expression and imagining, and they created a theatre thatwas in some ways hostage to its own fortune, being too dispersed andtoo accommodatingly spacious to support itself in straightenedeconomic circumstances. The ideology of regional inferiority and metro-politan superiority prevalent before this era was at first perhaps inverted,and then slightly eroded, but certainly never eradicated. It is overlyschematic to suggest that metropolitanism and regionalism were the onlymodels by which theatre funding was understood by governments before

28. Jackson, ‘1958–1983: Renewal, Growth and Retrenchment’, p. 89.

29. Shellard,


, p. 129; see also Trussler,


, p. 336.


31. Ibid, p. 89.

32. Mulgan and Worpole,


,p. 27.


34. Ibid, p. 96.

35. Shellard,


, p. 178. The regional theatres pioneered in this era had other shortcomings. Elsom argues that these theatres’ reliance on grant aid made their programming conservative and again, as in the post-war era, imitative of metropolitan tastes (Elsom, ‘United Kingdom’, p. 900). And while Trussler sees the rise in civic theatres as a positive articulation of civic identity and pride (Trussler,


, p. 336), Mulgan and Worpole argue that the civic emphasis of this period supported ‘very patrician forms of municipal provision’ and resisted what they portray as the potentially liberating influences of youth culture and popular culture (Mulgan and Worpole,


, p. 27).


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Blair’s. Other models already mentioned include, for example, theprovincial and the civic. Significantly, though, none of these modelsappreciably challenged the assumed dominance of the metropolis andthe UK-wide hierarchy that dominance underwrites.

THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM: RE-BRANDING BRITAIN AND THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

Discourses and structures of regionalism, metropolitanism and otherhierarchical models may not have been eliminated with Blair’s election,but they may have been dislodged by the shift in perspective to concen-trate instead on nations, including the re-branded ‘New Britain’,

36

aswell as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with their devolved Parlia-ment and Assemblies – and associated powers and budgets – establishedin 1999. Positively, this shift can be credited for imagining the UK’s partsmore equitably and, in so doing, actually facilitating more democraticexpression. On the other hand, there is the risk that empowering thenations could foster some of the most repressive effects of nationalism,such as efforts to homogenize national identities or – especially in thecase of ‘New Britain’ – attempts to assert and impose a neo-imperialdominance.

In order to evaluate New Labour’s enhanced focus on nations, it isimportant also to examine the Government’s ambitions for the so-called‘creative industries’, formerly, broadly, the arts and design.

37

These havereceived special promotion by Blair as evidence of his ‘New Britain’. In1997, he argued:

Britain was once the workshop of the world. It led the Industrial Revolu-tion. . . . I believe we are now in the middle of a second revolution, definedin part by new information technology, but also by creativity. Once againBritain can claim to be leading the way. We can say with pride that weare the ‘design workshop of the world’ – leading a creative revolution. . . .Our rock music is taking both America and Europe by storm; our musicalsare playing to packed audiences in over 20 countries.

38

And he and his Government have worked actively to promote Britainthrough its ‘creative industries’ by, for example, establishing theCreative Industries Task Force and the Creative Industries ExportAdvisory Group, and publishing two editions of the

Creative IndustriesMapping Document

as well as Culture Secretary Chris Smith’s collectionof speeches,

Creative Britain

.

39

All of these publications spell out theeconomic benefits of the ‘creative industries’, reporting, for example,that the performing arts alone earn an annual revenue of half a billionpounds, employ 74,000 people, and produce export income of £80million,

40

and that is without taking full account of what is generallyappreciated to be their immense if incalculable value in the field of ‘soft’diplomacy, easing the trade of other, less ‘sexy’ goods.

41

Crucial toBlair’s conceptualization of ‘New Britain’, the ‘creative industries’ havealso been commended to the devolved nations as key vehicles for devel-oping and promoting themselves, and the nations have responded

36. ‘New Britain’ was a prominent phrase in the discourse of New Labour approaching the 1997 general election. In the course of 1996, Tony Blair published his book

New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country

(London: Fourth Estate, 1996),

Labour launched its magazine for Party members,

New Labour, New Britain

, and Labour published its guide to policy,

New Labour New Britain: The Guide (London: Labour Party, 1996).

37. While the scale of New Labour’s promotion of the ‘creative industries’ was new, the phrase itself and the ideology underpinning it were not. Economic arguments for the arts and culture were rife throughout the 1980s. See, for example: Mulgan and Worpole, Saturday Night or Sunday Morning?; Justin Lewis, Art, Culture, and Enterprise, The Politics of Art and Cultural Industries (London: Routledge, 1990); John Myerscough, The Economic Importance of the Arts in Britain (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1988); Kershaw, ‘Discouraging Democracy’; and D. Keith Peacock, Thatcher’s Theatre: British Theatre and Drama in the Eighties (New York: Greenwood Press, 1999).

38. Tony Blair, ‘Britain Can Remake It’, Guardian (22 July 1997), p. 17.

39. Creative Industries Mapping Document (London: Department of Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS], 1998); Creative Industries Mapping Document (London: DCMS, 2001); Chris Smith, Creative Britain (London: Faber and


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accordingly, establishing export/touring agencies like Wales’s CreuCymru, funded by an Arts Council of Wales lottery grant.42

So, it is important to ask what are the cultural effects of New Labour’sfocus not only on nations, but also, simultaneously, on the ‘creativeindustries’. As noted above, New Labour’s industrialization of the artssuggests for many very sinister implications, wrongly prioritizing art’scommercial value over its social value, dangerously conflating the objec-tives of cultural and economic regeneration,43 limiting the right ofartistic expression to those who can be economically productive, disem-powering the people by transforming them from collective audiences andmakers into individual and alienated consumers, and so on into an abyssof anti-social capitalist commodity fetishism. And all of this might onlyenhance the worst possible effects of the Government’s emphasis on thenations, culture’s commodification potentially serving repressive modelsof both nationalism and neo-imperialism. On the other hand, it isimportant also to consider what positive cultural outcomes might resultfrom the Government’s focus on the ‘creative industries’, however off-putting the term itself might be. One such outcome is increased Govern-ment attention to and investment in the ‘creative industries’. Culturalpractitioners might in fact productively exploit this attention andinterest in order to make and distribute work that is socially constructiveand aware instead of alienated and alienating. In this scenario, the‘creative industries’ could end up supporting some of the potentiallypositive outcomes of the focus on nations, fostering pluralist and demo-cratic cultural expression.

In order to evaluate some of these potentials, the following sectionsexamine two institutions whose current and planned work can be seenas a result of these New Labour emphases on nations and ‘creativeindustries’. These institutions are the British Council and its workexporting ‘Cool Britannia’, and the new Scottish National Theatreplanned by the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Arts Council.Although the Arts Councils continue to exist and to alter, I shift fromlooking at them to looking at these particular bodies in order to reflectthe Government’s shift in focus to national identities, national institu-tions and economic aims for the nations’ ‘creative industries’. I chooseto examine these specific institutions because of both their similaritiesand their differences. Similarly, the work of both institutions is partlythe result of the Government’s emphases on nations and the ‘creativeindustries’ and is instructive about what the results of these emphasesmay be. The institutions’ differences – in scale, context of operation, andeffect – are, however, instructive too. Where the British Council issupernational (ostensibly representing the UK plus all of the nations thatform it), operates in a global context, and highlights especially some ofthe problems of the Government’s new emphases; the Scottish NationalTheatre is ‘small’ national, operates primarily in a domestic context, anddemonstrates more strongly some of the potentials that can result fromthe Government’s new emphases.

Faber Ltd, 1998). The Mapping Documents are available on the Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s website, at: http://www.culture.gov.uk/creative/creative_industries.html

40. Creative Industries Mapping Document (2001), pp. 10–12.

41. Ian Black, ‘Analysis: Cultural Diplomacy: No Business Like Show Business . . .’, Guardian (4 August 1998), p. 13. The Creative Industries Export Promotion Advisory Group (CIEPAG) set up by New Labour is explicit and forceful in its advocacy of using culture to promote the international trade of other British exports, stating, ‘The “entertainment” factor should be an essential part of trade weeks, to provide a cultural wrap around for UK plc as the UK itself, eg at a launch of a new model in the motor industry.’ CIEPAG, Creative Industries: Exports: Our Hidden Potential (London: DCMS, 1999), p. 46.

42. Creu Cymru, http://www.creucymru.co.uk

43. Lewis, Art, Culture, and Enterprise, p. 139.


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THE BRITISH COUNCIL RE-BRANDS BRITAIN

Soon after New Labour’s 1997 election victory, it launched Panel 2000,a co-ordinated effort by the Foreign Office, the Department of Trade andIndustry, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and others, topromote the UK and its culture overseas.44 Represented on Panel 2000and part-funded by the Foreign Office, the British Council was promptly‘on message’ about the re-branded Britain and ‘creative industries’ – thenew ‘Cool Britannia’ – it was exporting. It underwent a ‘visionprogramme’,45 through which it aimed to shed its own out-dated image‘as a purveyor of Shakespeare and Jane Austen’.46 It appointed HelenaKennedy as its ‘impeccably Blairite new chairperson’.47 And for BritishCouncil offices and English-language classrooms overseas, it commis-sioned a series of twelve new posters designed to demonstrate the conti-nuity and change of Blair’s new Britain by marrying old and new imagesof British creativity, including Benny Hill and Rowan Atkinson/Mr.Bean, Julie Christie and Kate Winslet, and Shakespeare and TomStoppard (see figures 1–3).48 ‘Cool Britannia’ was widely derided assuperficial by the Government’s critics – indeed, even the Governmentquickly distanced itself from what Chris Smith called ‘the flawed phrase’and Helena Kennedy called ‘ghastly sloganeering’, agreeing it potentiallyonly swapped one set of reductive clichés for another.49 But while theBritish Council did make some changes that were superficial in the literalsense (for example, adopting these new posters), other changes have hadgreater effects, both positive and negative. Positively, the British Councilseems to have taken seriously certain key words from New Labour’svocabulary to concentrate on presenting numerous and substantialexamples of British work that is creative, culturally diverse, new,dynamic,50 and neither hijacked by economic priorities or – the fearedresult of dreaded New Labour ‘spin’51 – substantially evacuated andrendered instead as superficial style. Further, it seems to be supporting arange of diverse – even democratic – expression, both within the UK andinternationally. Less positively, it can also be seen to be promotingcultural production characterized by varying degrees of homogeneity andelitism, and to be enacting a dangerous neo-imperialism.

In line with its aim to promote a new version of the UK, the BritishCouncil has, since 1997, altered both how it promotes as well as whatit promotes, and introduced certain new activities, including inter-national writing workshops. In 1997, it launched the two videos BritishTheatre and British Dance and, in 1998, it launched the glossy annualcatalogues British Theatre in Profile and British Dance in Profile, allaimed at overseas promoters.52 These promotional materials joined thepre-existing website53 and bi-annual On Tour: British Drama andDance magazine/catalogue produced since 1992 for overseas Counciloffices. In 1997, the Council increased its exploitation of the EdinburghFringe Festival as a shop window for live performance by holding itsfirst biennial week-long British Council Edinburgh Showcase which itdescribes as ‘a unique and concentrated opportunity for promoters andBritish Council colleagues to see some of the best British theatrecurrently available for international touring’.54 Over 200 international

44. Richard Brooks, ‘Cool Britain Flops on the World Stage’, Sunday Times (21 November 1999), p. 7.

45. Stephen Moss, ‘Arts: The Man Behind Blair plc Michael Johnson Is the Design Guru Charged with Selling the UK – and the Government – to the People’, Guardian (10 September 1998), p. T9.

46. John Lloyd, ‘For the Best of Britannia, Go to Berlin’, The Times (6 March 1998), p. 26.

47. Black, ‘Analysis: Cultural Diplomacy’,p. 13.

48. John Harlow, ‘Cook Sells Britain’s New Look Abroad’, Sunday Times (6 September 1998), p. 3, and Moss, ‘Arts: The Man Behind Blair plc’, p. 79.

49. Smith, Creative Britain, p. 5; Kennedy is quoted in Black, ‘Analysis: Cultural Diplomacy’,p. 13.

50. British Council, ‘Theatre and Dance Projects Overseas’, http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts/drama/dra1.htm

51. See, for example, Stephen Bayley, Labour Camp: The Failure of Style over Substance (London: B. T. Batsford, 1998) and Norman Fairclough, New Labour, New Language? (London: Routledge, 2000).

52. See ‘British Council Theatre and Dance Publications and Videos’, http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts/drama/drapub.htm. British Theatre in Profile became British Drama in Profile in 2001.

53. ‘Home Page: The British Council’s Theatre and Dance UK’, http://theatredance.britishcouncil.org/

54. ‘Edinburgh Showcase 2001’, On Tour, 18 (2001), p. 26.


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promoters attend this ‘snapshot of British creativity’,55 receiving accom-modation, show tickets, and a guidebook of around thirty productionsrecommended for touring. Finally, the Council hosts receptions, partiesand daily breakfast meetings where theatre companies and internationalpromoters can network and broker touring performance contracts.56

Alongside this work promoting performances, the British CouncilPerforming Arts Department has also worked to maintain the highprofile of new British theatre writing, especially through its initiation

Figure 1 British Council poster designed by Michael Johnson, 1998, featuring Benny Hill and Rowan Atkinson/Mr. Bean, photo: courtesy of the British Council

55. ‘Edinburgh Showcase 2001’, p. 26.

56. ‘Edinburgh Showcase 2001’, On Tour, 17 (May 2001), p. 3, and Alexander Kelly, Borce Nikolovski, and Ken Foster, ‘On Show’, On Tour, 19 (2002), 14–17 (pp. 14 and 16).


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and support of a number of Royal Court activities. For example, itsupported the Royal Court’s commission of David Hare to visit Palestineand Israel and write his response, the one-man show Via Dolorosa, firststaged in 1998.57 And in 1999 it initially invited and then supported theRoyal Court to run a series of new writing seminars in Russia,promoting the translated work of Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill andPatrick Marber, and also nurturing new Russian writing.58 It has runsimilar programmes in Brazil, Palestine and Uganda.59

Figure 2 British Council poster designed by Michael Johnson, 1998, featuring Julie Christie and Kate Winslet, photo: courtesy of the British Council

57. ‘A Writer’s Report from the Front’, Financial Times (9 September 1998), p. 20. For more on the Royal Court’s British Council-sponsored activities,see Elyse Dodgson, ‘International Playwrights at the Royal Court Theatre’, On Tour, 16 (July 2000), pp. 2–3, and Sasha Dugdale, ‘Revolutions and Revelations’, On Tour, 16 (July 2000), p. 4.

58. Paul Taylor, ‘Russia’s New Revolution’, Independent (6 March 2002), p. 9.

59. Mark Espiner, ‘All the World on Stage’, The Guardian Weekend(23 February 2002),pp. 34–36.


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How much the British Council has increased or changed its promo-tion of UK performance since around 1997 is, however, less importantsocially than what kind of work it has promoted and how successful thatpromotion has been in getting a range of British performance andexpression into the public sphere. Eschewing its image ‘as a purveyor ofShakespeare and Jane Austen’60 – of writing which is ‘classic’ andliterally old, in other words – the British Council has promoted a rangeof work that is impressively broad, in both style and geographical origin.

Figure 3 British Council poster designed by Michael Johnson, 1998, featuring Shakespeare and Tom Stoppard, photo: courtesy of the British Council

60. Lloyd, ‘For the Best of Britannia, Go to Berlin’.

61. To take 1999 as a sample year, the British Council supported some ‘old’ heritage, for example several Shakespeare productions, including the Royal Shakespeare Company’s The Taming of the Shrew and Troilus and Cressida, which travelled to Hong Kong and Israel respectively. But not all of the exported Shakespeare productions were either mainstream or ‘old’ in their modes of production, for example Steven Berkoff’s Shakespeare’s Villains, which travelled to Argentina, Hong Kong, and India. The Council promoted a great deal of recent writing by Mark Ravenhill, Patrick Marber, Caryl Churchill, and Conor McPherson. And many of the supported companies and makers can be considered avant garde, including: Nigel Charnock, Franko B, Forced Entertainment, V-Tol, the David Glass Ensemble, Desperate Optimists, Station House Opera, Improbable, DV8 Physical Theatre, and Bobby Baker. Information in this note is derived from several pages on the British Council’s website devoted to ‘A selection of drama and dance events worldwide since


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The video British Theatre, for example, features the work of fifteentheatre companies whose work ranges from live art (Bobby Baker), tophysical theatre (Frantic Assembly, Improbable Theatre), to puppetry(Stephen Mottram’s Animata), to text-based theatre (Out of Joint,Shared Experience). A similar range of text-based, experimental, andphysical theatre is characteristic of the work selected for promotion bythe British Council in any given year since 1997,61 as well as in theEdinburgh Showcases. While work promoted comes primarily from theSouth East of England, especially London, this emphasis is by no meansexclusive. A recent issue of On Tour, for example, highlights theatre inScotland, Wales and Northern Ireland,62 and the video British Theatreincludes companies from Bath (Natural Theatre Company), Newcastle(Northern Stage), Oxford (Stephen Mottram’s Animata), Glasgow(nva), Edinburgh (Communicado), and Swansea (Volcano).63 Wales,Scotland and Northern Ireland are further promoted by the BritishCouncil through arts contacts based in Council offices in Cardiff, Edin-burgh and Belfast, as well as by a recent (if overdue) shift in the BritishCouncil’s own branding to promote the ‘UK’ and not simply ‘Britain’ inits most recent poster campaign, launched in 2001. Further, the rangeand cultural origin of new theatre the British Council promotescontinues to grow. The 2002 British Drama in Profile catalogue includesdetailed information on 125 theatre companies and individual artists,an increasing number of which come from outside London and/or areracially mixed or non-white, for example: Moti Roti, Tamasha TheatreCompany, Tara Arts, Yellow Earth Theatre, and NITRO.64

While it is perhaps more difficult to evaluate the success of the BritishCouncil’s promotion, there are clear examples that suggest it is workingin getting a range of British performance work into the market – or, lesscynically, the public sphere – as well as generating income for artists tomake further work. For example, as a result of promotion at the 2001British Council Showcase in Edinburgh, Stan’s Café and UrsulaMartinez both secured extensive touring opportunities. With BritishCouncil assistance, Birmingham-based Stan’s Café, which devisesoriginal theatre and installation work, has toured and will tour It’s YourFilm (pictured in figure 4) to Germany, the Netherlands, the CzechRepublic, Ireland, France, Lithuania, Estonia, Croatia, and Portugal.65

Ursula Martinez, who is based in London and makes hybrid cabaret/liveart, toured Show Off (pictured in figure 5) to Australia, the Netherlands,Hong Kong, Hungary, and Estonia, also with Council assistance.66

Read positively, the British Council’s promotional work can be seento support cultural expression that ranges broadly in form, perhaps mostobviously, but also in geographical and cultural origins, fulfilling BritishCouncil Director of Performing Arts John Kieffer’s claim, ‘We mustembrace changes in cultural identity, changes in technology, changes invalues and changes in tastes’.67 In this sense the British Council’s workcan be seen to support democratic expression and imagining. By helpingto displace overseas promoters’ and audiences’ residual expectations thatBritain’s theatre export will primarily be based on old texts, grandlystaged, performed in a particular style, and costly to import, it can alsobe seen as working to break down prejudices that prevent acceptance of

January 1999 [and to the end of 1999 only], supported by the British Council’, linked from ‘Events Review’ on ‘Home Page: British Council’s Theatre and Dance UK’,http://theatredance.britishcouncil.org/ The public availability of this online information makes this year a useful example; notably, however, comparable information summarizing the theatre and dance work supported by the British Council in any given year is published in each issue of On Tour.

62. See On Tour, 13 (January 1999).

63. To use 1999 as a sample year again, work promoted came also from Belfast (Dubbeljoint Theatre Company), Nottingham (Nottingham Playhouse), and Scotland, with a week of Scottish play readings in Croatia. See ‘A selection of drama and dance events worldwide since January 1999 . . .’, linked from ‘Events Review’ on ‘Home Page: British Council’s Theatre and Dance UK’, http://theatredance.britishcouncil.org/

64. British Drama in Profile 2002 (London: The British Council, 2001). Similar promotional information is posted on ‘Home Page: The British Council’s Theatre and Dance UK’, http://theatredance.britishcouncil.org/

65. E-mail to the author from Stan’s Café administrator, Emily Dawkes, 17 April 2002.

66. British Drama in Profile 2002, p. 43, and ‘(P)Review’, On Tour 19 (2002), pp. 26–28.

67. John Kieffer, ‘Let’s Talk about Art, Maybe’, Observer (28 March 1999), p. 33.


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changing, democratic expressions of British cultural identities. Potentiallyfurther democratizing are the Royal Court writing workshops, wherewriters in different countries worldwide are facilitated in addressingissues which are particular to – and often urgent within – their localcultural contexts. Read less positively, while the British Council may havemoved away from promoting one relatively elitist and homogeneousprofile for Britain – featuring ‘Shakespeare and Jane Austen’ – it mayhave contributed to developing another profile – featuring postmodernperformance art – which some might see as characterized still by elitismand homogeneity. Further, by aiming to export British culture andEnglish language,68 the British Council has always risked being accusedof cultural imperialism. Its current global promotion of what might beseen as a ‘house’ writing style (Royal Court) and a ‘house’ performancestyle (UK postmodern performance art) – as well as global markets inwhich to sell both – make it vulnerable to this accusation still. Finally,because the British Council only markets a range of British performanceand does not directly fund the making of any work, it could be accusednot of supporting democratic expression, but rather of exploiting animage of Britain as democratic, of cynically producing and marketing, inother words, a simulacrum of British democracy.

SCOTLAND THE BRAND

Like Britain, Scotland and the other small nations have been encouragedto adopt the language of the ‘creative industries’ and to re-brand

Figure 4 It’s Your Film by Stan’s Café, with Graeme Rose, photo: Ed Dimsdale

68. The British Council outlined its aims in The British Council: Speeches Delivered on the Occasion of the Inaugural Meeting at St. James’s Palace on 2nd July, 1935 (London: privately printed by the British Council, 1935), quoted in Frances Donaldson, The British Council: The First Fifty Years (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984), pp. 1–2.


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themselves in the image of ‘New Britain’, especially in an internationalcontext. Like British Government publications, Scottish Executive publi-cations have argued for the economic benefits of the creative industries.The Scottish Executive’s Creating Our Future . . . Minding Our Past:Scotland’s National Cultural Strategy, published in 2000, reports thatthe creative industries ‘are estimated to be worth around £5 billion tothe Scottish economy each year’, that ‘50,000 are employed in the

Figure 5 Show Off by Ursula Martinez, photo: Hugo Glendinning


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cultural sector’, and, in a significant shift from economic to socialconsiderations, that the creative industries ‘make a major contributionto people’s quality of life’.69 It also argues the benefit of investing inScotland’s culture to improve and update its international image in waysfamiliar from the example of ‘New Britain’: ‘cultural developmentcontributes to the image of Scotland as a modern, dynamic and forward-looking society’.70 This is an especially crucial factor for the ScottishExecutive, given its ambition for Scotland to be the ‘most globallyconnected small nation in Europe’.71 To fulfil this aim, one of theStrategy’s stated priorities is to ‘promote international cultural exchangeand dialogue’ by supporting international travel opportunities forartists, and by building ‘upon existing initiatives and joint working byrelevant bodies such as SAC [the Scottish Arts Council], the BritishCouncil, Scotland Europa, Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Trade Inter-national and Scottish Screen to develop opportunities to promoteScotland’s culture abroad’.72

SAC has fully supported – and in many respects had alreadyanticipated73 – the Executive’s ambitions. ‘Scotland’s cultural activityand exports’, SAC argues, ‘are essential tools of national and inter-national dialogue and promotion. They are one of the country’sprincipal marketing tools, equivalent to an advertising spend worthmillions of pounds’.74 The independent Working Group invited by SACto report on the feasibility of a Scottish national theatre argues, perhapsnot surprisingly, that theatre in particular has been especially importantin promoting Scotland, implying that it should be supported in con-tinuing to do so. ‘In the twentieth century’, the Working Group’s finalreport claims, ‘it was theatre which first put distinctively Scottish voiceson the cultural map, changed perceptions of Scotland, and operated atthe cutting edge of political and social change.’75

So, the Scottish Executive, like the British Council, is ‘on message’about the value of the creative industries and fully committed topromoting a ‘New Scotland’ which resembles in key respects the much-touted ‘New Britain’ – ‘modern, dynamic and forward-looking’.However, again, this is neither simply empty rhetoric nor a thin subter-fuge claiming interest in the arts while actually undermining them byconcentrating primarily on their economic worth. Positively, the ScottishExecutive has supported a heterogeneous, democratic Scottish theatre,investing not simply in its promotion, as the British Council does, butin its very making, while simultaneously resisting autocratically – oranti-democratically – decreeing what it should be. While primarily ahopeful example, two points of concern that this example raises at thisstage are that it maintains an emphasis on export – and so on expressionand imagining outside of the UK – and that it is as yet unrealized.

New Labour political discourse about the importance of the creativeindustries has helped secure much-needed funding for the arts, andparticularly for theatre, in Scotland. With a Scottish national opera,ballet, orchestra, chamber orchestra, and gallery already established andwith theatre suffering from chronic under-funding, the Executive quicklyrecognized the need to support Scottish theatre more fully. It made athree-year commitment to allocate Additional Money for Drama

69. Scottish Executive, Creating Our Future . . . Minding Our Past: Scotland’s National Cultural Strategy (Edinburgh: Scottish Executive, 2000), available online at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/nationalculturalstrategy/docs/cult-03.asp

70. Scottish Executive, Creating Our Future: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/nationalculturalstrategy/docs/cult-02.asp

71. Scottish Executive, A Smart, Successful Scotland: Ambitions for the Enterprise Networks (Edinburgh: Scottish Executive, 2001), available online at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library3/enterprise/sss-00.asp See also Scottish Executive, Scotland: A Global Connections Strategy (Edinburgh: Scottish Executive, 2001), available online at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library3/enterprise/agcs-00.asp

72. Scottish Executive, Creating Our Future: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/nationalculturalstrategy/docs/cult-14.asp Curiously, in this context, the Strategy fails to mention Scotland the Brand, an organization that aims to promote Scottish trade, tourism, culture, and a coherent brand identity and is funded indirectly by the Scottish Executive through Scottish Enterprise. See Scotland the Brand: http://www.scotbrand.com, and Scottish Enterprise: http://www.scottish-enterprise.com

73. See, for example, SAC, Response to the Consultation on National Cultural Strategy (Glasgow: Scottish Arts Council, November 1999), p. 19.


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(1999–2002)76 and pledged in its Strategy to ‘take steps to establish anational theatre for Scotland’.77 The Strategy did not detail what formsuch a theatre would take, but the final report of the Scottish NationalTheatre Working Group, published in May 2001, does. It concludes,‘The Scottish National Theatre should be a creative producer whichengages with the whole theatre sector as its “production company”,working with and through the existing Scottish theatre community toachieve its objectives’.78 The Scottish National Theatre thus envisionedwill not devour all available public theatre funding, starving existingtheatres and theatre work. Nor will it be strictly building-based in, forexample, the central belt of Glasgow/Edinburgh, reinforcing a Scottishmetropolitanism. Rather, it will sponsor and commission a variety oftypes of work to be produced in a range of working contexts throughoutthe nation. It will be a devolved national theatre, with power andopportunities for expression distributed to its constituents.

Plans for a Scottish National Theatre have been mooted many timesbefore but, as theatre critic John Fowler notes, ‘Where the scheme differsfrom its predecessors is that it does not aim to create a new theatrecompany based on any particular theatre (new or old) which would thenin a sense demote the rest, but invites all existing companies and creativepeople to contribute.’79 In conception at least, this Scottish nationaltheatre will at once assume the authority of being national while main-taining the confidence to devolve and disperse its powers. It will alsowork collaboratively, and be adaptable to Scotland’s geographical andcultural diversity.80 It will not impose a uniform Scottish identity ortheatre practice, but will facilitate the articulation of different groups’identities, experiences and theatre practices. Although it may be apositive outcome of New Labour’s ideological investment in the creativeindustries, its purpose is not simply economic. It is committed to quality,education, and professional development, and to reflecting a sense ofidentity which is ‘inclusive and outward looking’, precisely not, as criticsof national – or nationalist – institutions might warn, exclusive andinward looking.81 Finally, according to plans proposed by the WorkingGroup, the Scottish National Theatre may tour internationally as soonas 2004–5,82 fulfilling one of its intended roles as an internationalambassador for Scottish culture, and widening the public sphere inwhich Scottish theatre is performed and Scottish identities are expressedand imagined.

As I write in spring 2002, these plans look to have proved slightly over-ambitious as the Scottish Executive has recently diverted £2 million ear-marked for the national theatre initiative into a new £3.5 millionfunding package for Scotland’s existing theatres, leaving only £1 millionin the national theatre budget for 2003–04, when £1.5 million hadoriginally been proposed.83 This budget change will certainly set backthe timing of the national theatre initiative, but considering that Scot-land’s existing theatres were meant to form the basis of the nationaltheatre in the first place, it might be seen not as a loss to the nationaltheatre budget but as a shift within it. On the other hand, withoutadequate capital investment, Blair’s cultural capitalism may proveunworkable. The future will tell whether this Scottish national theatre

74. SAC, Response to the Consultation on National Cultural Strategy, p. 20.

75. Scottish National Theatre: Final Report of the Independent Working Group (Glasgow: Scottish Arts Council, 2001), p. 6, available from the SAC website: http://www.sac.org.uk/nonhtdocs/single-page-report.pdf

76. SAC, ‘News Release: A National Theatre for Scotland to Be Proud of’, 24 July 2001:http://www.sac.org.uk/news/news_82.htm.

77. Scottish Executive, Creating Our Future: www.scotland.gov.uk/nationalculturalstrategy/docs/cult-05.asp

78. Scottish National Theatre: Final Report of the Independent Working Group, p. 5.

79. John Fowler, ‘Theatre and Nation’, In Scotland, 3 (2000, special issue titled Theatre, Music, Nation), 17–21 (p. 18). For more on the history of debates about and models of a Scottish National Theatre see Denis Agnew, ‘The Scottish National Theatre Dream: The Royal Lyceum in the 1970s; the Scottish Theatre Company in the 1980s’, International Journal of Scottish Theatre, 2.1 (June 2001), available online at: http://arts.qmuc.ac.uk/ijost/Volume2_no1/D_Agnew.htm, and Roger Savage, ‘A Scottish National Theatre?’, in Randall Stevenson and Gavin Wallace (eds), Scottish Theatre Since the Seventies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), pp. 23–33.

80. Scottish National Theatre: Final Report of the Independent Working Group,pp. 8–9.


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model collapses, is delayed or thrives. It deserves investment because itholds out imaginings of Scottish identity which are confidently hetero-geneous, authoritative, socially purposeful, and independent as well as,in the Scottish Executive’s terms, ‘modern, dynamic and forward-looking’. Where it perhaps should exercise caution is in its ambition toexport itself, an ambition that risks cultural imperialism, as the BritishCouncil example – admittedly operating on a different scale and in adifferent socio-historical context – suggests.

* * *

The apparent paradox of this article’s title is intentional. What thephrase ‘nationalizing the “creative industries”’ aims to indicate is thatwhile New Labour encourages – or, by force of circumstance, compels– the arts to trade in the unprotected sphere of private enterprise, itsimultaneously demonstrates a desire to maintain national (public)control of them, precisely for the purpose of manipulating Britishnational identities as commodities. While these urges to privatize and tonationalize, to deregulate and to regulate, may appear to be antithetical,they have nevertheless co-existed at least since 1997 and they bearscrutiny. Perhaps unsurprisingly given their somewhat paradoxicalimpetuses, their effects are uneven. They certainly risk commodifyingculture and repressing the expression of cultural difference. By empha-sizing export, they also risk producing a neo-imperialism and detractingfrom democratic cultural expression – and imagining – within Britain.However, by displacing the historically dominant asymmetrical modelsof metropolitanism and regionalism, they also introduce and enact amore empowering paradigm for imagining the communities that makeup the UK. And at their best, as in the sheer range of work promotedby the British Council, and as in the plans for the Scottish NationalTheatre, they demonstrate that this national imagining can be healthilypluralist and democratic. New Labour may well be interested inexpanding the markets for the knowledge- and service-based economyof ‘New Britain’ to trade in. But artists can at least partially transformthose markets into public spheres for democratically exchanging ideasand practices and imagining identities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges the Arts and Humanities ResearchBoard for supporting research for this article and Erin Hurley and ananonymous reader for Contemporary Theatre Review for commentingon earlier versions of this article.

81. Scottish National Theatre: Final Report of the Independent Working Group, pp. 5, 9.

82. Scottish National Theatre: Final Report of the Independent Working Group, p. 17.

83. Arnold Kemp, ‘Scottish National Theatre Must Wait in Wings’, The Observer (3 February 2002). Information on the original budget for the national theatre is from Scottish National Theatre: Final Report of the Independent Working Group, p. 4.


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