Neil Mendoza, the Government’s Commissioner for Cultural Recovery and Renewal, is talking about the dissonance between those who work in the arts and the current Government. “There is no overlap between the two. No one in the cultural sector votes Tory and no one voted for Brexit so there is no natural affinity in terms of votes. And yet, this Government cares more about culture than any that I can remember. “The Prime Minister is keen on culture and so is Munira Mirza, head of policy at Number 10, and it goes right across the board.” This feels a little hard to accept on a day when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak announced a new Job Support Scheme to replace the furlough scheme, which requires companies who choose to employ people for a third of their normal working hours to also pay for a third of the hours the employee has lost. But Mendoza is remaining upbeat. He says that he “welcomes the Chancellor’s intervention. And we will see how these measures affect the sector. It will take a few weeks to understand the impact of what all of this means. It may be like some of the European measures such as we have seen in Germany. “The creative industries have a natural resourcefulness because they want to put something on, whether it’s a museum, a garden, a heritage site or theatre. They will do something, no question.” I first met Mendoza a week ago, in his book-lined office in Mayfair (the former premises of John Murray Publishing, which once looked after Byron and Jane Austen), when things were looking a little rosier. We were there, in the main, to discuss the apportionment of the healthy £1.5 billion package the cultural sector was awarded in July, just as rumours swirled that the current administration cared not a fig for an industry, which, until the coronavirus struck, was one of the most dynamic in the UK. Mendoza’s role, created in the spring by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, is, in crude terms, to oversee who gets the dosh. He has been working with what are known as “arm’s length bodies” – Arts Council England, the British Film Institute, Historic England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund – which deal with the thousands of applications (for loans or grants) which have come from all over the UK. Mendoza tells me that the analysis of reports from each of these will be completed by the end of September, with rolled-out announcements of who is getting what to follow shortly afterwards. He expects the money to start reaching successful applicants in October. Simple? Of course not, says Mendoza. They have had to look at many different operating models – from fringe theatres to railway museums, and despite his insistence on this Government’s love of all things cultural, it was not a case of the Treasury merely opening its purse. “There is always going to be resistance because they say you’ve got to argue your case, along with health, or education, or defence. And, of course, there will be further resistance because it is taxpayers’ money. So we have to offer reassurance to the Treasury that money is being spent sensibly, and that we’re not frittering away money on organisations that won’t survive.” Mendoza describes himself as a natural optimist, but he is not so Pollyannaish to think it’s going to be all beer and skittles for the sector. When I catch up with him following the Prime Minister’s warnings of a further six months of Covid-19 restrictions on Tuesday, he sounds a note of caution. Pilots around the country to test safety at various venues will continue but he worries about the psychological effect of this week’s prognosis. He says: “My task is to redouble the seriousness of what we are doing. The lack of activity in central city locations because of people now working from home again will create an additional challenge. We need to work to create confidence for people to leave their homes and enjoy culture and entertainment in the towns and cities and that will be all the harder because some people might not want to do that.” Then the optimist speaks: “But there are lots of people who do have confidence and they will see these places are really well prepared.” Mendoza is 59 and grew up in suburban north London. He got into culture through music (an early memory is seeing T. Rex at Camden’s Roundhouse) and later, at school (Haberdashers’ Aske’s) and university (Oriel College, Oxford, where he is now provost) he found a passion for acting, although he is keen to point out he is not a frustrated thesp. He is certainly not theatrical in person, though there is a sense of playfulness. When I ask him what he thinks of Oliver Dowden (the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport), he seems momentarily flustered. “I can’t go into that!”, before adding. “I think he is a very nice man.” Mendoza then goes on to describe Dowden as “inspirational” and “clever”, though it is clear, later, that he has no truck with the term “crown jewels” that Dowden has used, several times, when referring to our best-loved cultural institutions. “I hate that phrase,” he says. “It doesn’t mean anything because if you are a small museum in a village, you are that village’s crown jewels and if that goes, you have taken away what is meaningful.” One of the big tussles over the bail-out money is between the big, previously successful institutions and those that operate at grassroots level (indeed, £2.25 million has already been apportioned to grassroots music venues across the country). For Mendoza, the recovery fund is about recognition of how important culture is to society. “It is not just about rescuing culture for its own sake. It’s about rescuing culture because it’s woven into the fabric of towns and cities.” Of course a major crisis for the sector has been the plight of individuals, the freelancers who are the lifeblood of arts and culture. “All the people in the industry… those who do the lighting, the sound effects people, set designers. It’s so tough for them, but if we can save organisations, that will have an effect on them, then we can move into activity which will help everybody else.” He does worry he says for the performing in arts, in particular: “I worry because you experience the live arts best when you are in a mosh pit surrounded by lots of other people, and I lament that experience has gone and I feel sorry for young people who haven’t had that.” I ask Mendoza about a shakedown in the arts when all of this is over. Does he think we will be forced to adopt the American model of philanthropy? “I think about museums like the Tate whose own income derives from philanthropy or ticket sales or commercial activities, so in a way we are able to look after ourselves and that is not a terrible thing.” He goes on to talk about a smaller organisation, the Soho Theatre, in London, of which he was vice-chairman, as an example of a company that had its public subsidy slashed and managed to survive through a mixture of commercial activity; with a bar and restaurant, tickets at different prices and, of course, a certain one-woman show called Fleabag. “The more you look after yourself the better,” he says. Despite the wodge of cash that is on its way, that sounds, on reflection, like a sepulchral statement of things to come. “It is such a responsible task to get this right,” says Mendoza. “We are being tasked to save our sector and not everything will be saved because there is not enough money to go round.” He brightens: “But hopefully not too many.”
source https://news.yahoo.com/neil-mendoza-interview-government-cares-191644327.html
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