Discourse: Culture Secretary Maria Miller's art's speech in full & Gavin Wade's response

Key Points:

This text is uplifting towards British culture and the arts.

• "Culture educates, entertains and it enriches." p.1.
• "Our culture is our hallmark"
• A lot of funding for the arts and culture. p.2

Gavin Wade Text/ Response

• "Economics is meaningless without culture" p.1
• "Culture is marketable because it is successful on cultural terms."
• "Culture is primary. Marketing is secondary"p.1
• "Culture should not be presented as commodity. Culture should never be presented as 'compelling product' to sell anywhere. This will destroy culture." p.1
• This conflict of culture /money... one cant exist without the other. 
• If you go through culture/ art as something that can be seen as monetary value, then maybe this isn't what culture is, or shouldn't be seen as this...
• Reminds me of the book Sweet Dreams Art and Complicity by Johanna Drucker - last term.
• Winston Churchill asked to cut budget for arts during the ww2 - response - what are we fighting for?
• Some schools have entirely cut out the art department because of the budgets!!
• No room for creative teaching... its getting neglected in education. 
• A way to make art.
• Statistics - 
• Everything is measured by economics.. even this course, can you measure economics - no. But Miller is arguing you can't get the economics to get the budgets. 
• The future of culture will be for the future - measurable by economics. Is this needed to make things happen?
• Spend more money on arms/ war.. killing people, than they do educating them.
• Art is free in this country (in most cases apart from some V&A exhibitions) but other art forms like plays you have to pay for. 
• Since 2008 one of the markets that consistently rose is the art market, it is constantly growing. 
• We live in a capitalist society.
• Social aspect of culture - in times like this, culture brings people together, maybe the budgets have been cut to separate people in times of austerity...  A tool to create instability. Culture has an impact on togetherness. 

Further research: 

• Birmingham east side projects
• Johanna Drucker Sweet Dreams book re-visit. 
• Ikon Gallery