When Dame Liz Forgan became chairwoman of the Arts Council in February her
first decision was which paintings to hang in her office. It was, she knew,
a choice on which she would instantly be judged. “I'm no great expert in the
visual arts, so I said, 'Give me things by struggling women', and I got a
Rachel Whiteread.” At home she rents prints from a shop in Hampstead to put
on her walls. “I have a Hockney and a Miró at the moment. I don't collect
art - I can't afford it.” She shops at M&S rather than Marni and
knows the Prêt à Manger selection of sandwiches better than the menu at The
Ivy.
Although the former women's editor of The Guardian and head of
programming at Channel 4 is often portrayed as one of the grander members of
the liberal elite, she is far more practical and approachable than most
luvvies. Educated at Benenden, she retains a jolly hockey sticks enthusiasm
- but she also has a bluestocking rigour acquired at St Hugh's College,
Oxford. “I've never been a great and good person,” she says. “The cultural
life of Britain belongs to everyone. It belongs to dukes and duchesses and
to the kids in local schools.”
Now, in a recession, it is Dame Liz's job to bash the Chancellor over the head
with her lacrosse stick for money. She was disappointed by this week's
Budget announcement that the Arts Council would lose £4 million of its £467
million funding. “Everyone has to chip in but you do a great deal of damage
for a very small amount of money if you reduce the arts budget.”
In her view, culture is more important in a downturn. “If there's one thing
that really enrages me it's the idea that the arts are a luxury. The word
summons up the vision of people swathed in mink getting out of Rolls-Royces,
and the reality of the arts is that it's devoted people living on
fourpence-ha'penny who passionately love what they do. The fact is, the arts
can cheer us up.”
They can also, she says, help to make sense of the turmoil. The Great
Depression in the 1930s spawned a generation of writers and artists from
John Steinbeck to Edward Hopper. “Artists understand and interpret traumatic
events in a way that serves us all. This country is going through a trauma
... We're going through a fundamental re-examination of our way of life and
our priorities. That's a frightening thing to go through and having the
insight of artists to reveal and discuss those events is useful.”
Like President Roosevelt, who made the arts an integral part of his New Deal,
Dame Liz thinks that cultural organisations can help to tackle the
recession. Theatres, galleries and dance troupes with Arts Council funding
will be encouraged to offer jobs to thousands of unemployed young people.
“There's a need for skills and hard work. You're not going to make them
produce a show at the National Theatre straightaway but there are all kinds
of technical jobs and front-of-house jobs that they could do.”
The banks have had their bailout and Dame Liz is also planning a rescue
package for the arts. “There will be £40 million over two years for
organisations suffering directly as a result of the recession, for those
whose banks won't extend credit. We will give them cash. It's not a bailout
but we thought it was our job to help excellent organisations who, through
no fault of their own, are seeing important work threatened.”
In the 1990s recession donations to the arts fell by 14 per cent. Last year,
she says, there was already a drop of 7 per cent and it is likely that this
is only the start. “On the whole box office is holding up pretty well but
corporate sponsorship is dropping.”
The 50p tax rate for the highest earners could have a further impact on
donations. Dame Liz wants the Government to encourage philanthropy. “The
Government should make it possible to write off contributions to culture
made while people are still alive against their income tax.”
Despite the recession, parts of the art market still seem extraordinarily
buoyant. Last year Damien Hirst earned £95 million auctioning off his
pickled sharks and golden calves but, she says: “Only the most expensive
super-hot bit of the international art market can be called a bubble. Damien
Hirst is not my favourite artist. He does say something about the world we
live in but I am not sure whether I would choose to be reminded of it every
five minutes.”
Her taste is more traditional. She supports the decision to save Old Masters
for the nation. “The Madonna of the Pinks comes along once in a
blue moon. I saw it again the other day and it is just wonderful. A group of
mothers from a housing estate and some schoolchildren were looking at it and
that made it worth all the money.”
Dame Liz, a former managing director of BBC Radio, believes that the arts have
benefited from the dumbing down of TV. “If I look at what is happening to
British television it is very disturbing. It was a glory of our national
culture. You need to have enough money, a creative purpose and a
concentration of talent to produce the best, and we no longer have those.
The economic structure now drives to the lowest common denominator.
“I looked at a schedule the other night and there was no storytelling left.
It's not elitist to think that's a shame. One of the great characteristics
of TV was drama and now it's all reality TV. Broadcasting is in a turmoil.
But in the arts the stories are still going on.”
She thinks that people are still willing to be challenged by what they watch.
“Audiences are more sophisticated and ambitious than you think. The BBC is
caught between ratings and quality. If they pursue the innovative,
dangerous, exciting, risk-taking stuff that they should be doing they will
lose ratings in the short term and politicians will complain.”
She says that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand should pay the fine imposed on
the corporation after their public humiliation of Andrew Sachs, and it is
clear that she is not comfortable with the top stars' multimillion-pound
salaries. “The BBC has to decide whether to compete in the marketplace or
not. But in the end it will get its best talent by growing it.”
The role of the Arts Council is, she says, to “make culture attractive and
relevant to people whether young or old whose lives have somehow skirted
around the arts. You may not like 19th-century opera but you might be
completely crazy about electronic music.”
Dame Liz would hate to be an MP but she would fit into the Lords. She is the
first woman to run the Arts Council and was one of the most senior women
executives in broadcasting. She is still chairwoman of the Scott Trust,
which owns The Guardian, and a trustee of the British Museum.
There are, she thinks, two reasons for her becoming such a successful woman.
During her single-sex education it never crossed her mind that women could
not run things. “And I don't have children. It is unquestionably much more
difficult for women with children to have a long-term career. I am in awe of
women with children juggling 18 balls but the superwoman myth went too far.
In your life if you are a daughter, mate, parent and have a career you
cannot give 100 per cent of time to all of them.”
Quick Fire
Tate Modern or Tate Britain I am not allowed to say
Sylvie Guillem or Darcey Bussell Sylvie Guillem
Grayson Perry or Henry Moore Grayson Perry
The Wire or The Bill The Wire
Lucian Freud or Damian Hirst Lucian Freud
The Ivy or Prêt à Manager Prêt à Manger
M&S or Marni M&S for me, dear
Madonna or Madonna of the Pinks Madonna of the Pinks, and it's
cheaper
Rap or Rachmaninov Neither
Curriculum Vitae
Family Born August 31, 1944, in Calcutta. Her Scottish father was in
the Gordon Highlanders in India. At the end of the war he became a
globetrotting oil executive
Education Benenden School, Kent, and St Hugh's College, Oxford
Career Her first job was as arts editor of the Teheran Journal,
then in 1969 she moved to the Hampstead and Highgate Express. She
worked for the London Evening Standard before becoming editor of The
Guardian's women's page in 1978. She was founding commissioning editor,
then director of programmes at Channel 4 from 1981 to 1990. She was managing
director of radio at the BBC between 1993 and 1996. She was chairwoman of
the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the
Churches Conservation Trust. She is now chairwoman of the Scott Trust (the
non-profit organisation that owns the Guardian Media Group) and a trustee of
the British Museum. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the British Empire
for services to broadcasting and heritage in 2006. She took up her post as
chairwoman of the Arts Council in February this year.
Interests “She was never a typical Sixties student,” says a
contemporary. “The rest of us were starting to get into sex, drugs,
rock'n'roll and flashy clothes but somehow she seemed to be stuck in the
Fifties.”
