Rotten Borough: a play about Hackney in how many Acts?

The Times' Business pages is not the first place you would look for an article about Hackney, but Ian King's column today described the borough as 'the success story that Labour is writing off'. Ian charts Hackney's rise since the meltdown of the 1990s to become the 'poster child for new Labour': vastly improved public services, a benign environment for businesses to flourish; a place where a diverse range of people want to live. He then makes the strange assertion that 'at a time when Mr Brown is hurtling back towards old Labour ideology, they (businesses) are flourishing in a borough run very much in line with the modernised approach that the Prime Minister is junking.'

I can't think of a single Brownite policy, piece of legislation or regulation that should impact negatively on the success of small businesses in Hackney (beyond the general economic mess we are all blaming each other for). However, for Hackney to continue to thrive may require some new thinking from the centre of government.

Every party, in very jargonistic terms (anyone for 'new localism' or double-devolution?) talks about the need for the centre to let go. Not necessarily to town halls, but out and down, to the rims of various wheels.

Given the experiences of the last twenty years, if government can let go in Hackney, it can let go anywhere. When Tony Blair talked about the 'scars on my back' from forcing change onto public services, his experiences in Hackney in the 1980s were as damaging as his Prime Ministerial predicaments.

But do we really understand what happened in Hackney, or other London boroughs, during that strange period of ratecapped neglect after the GLC was abolished? To move on, double-devolve, give power away in the way we need to, the story of Hackney's 'rotten borough' period seems worth telling. Amidst the chaos and corruption, there are bound to be some individual stories that can reveal the human experiences and emotions, the quiet and loud victims of political processes.

We probably all agree we don't want to go back there, but do we really understand what 'there' was like, and how it can be avoided?

Today I asked Hackney Archives about their records from that period. They revealed a gap in their collection of council minutes, from around 2003 for about three years. Any gap is an incentive to dig. Who does Hackney think it is?

Why Arms Length?

Personal and political. After 15 years with various institutions, I finally have a whole year when I am at arms length from all of them - on nobody's payroll. I have been very lucky in that none of these institutions have been particularly constraining. At school, as long as the kids were relatively quiet, you could close the door and get on with it - the national curriculum, ofsted and the rest of the paraphanelia were often just smokescreens for neglect and autonomy. At ippr, my team was always solvent and relatively productive, though only sporadically influential. Cue for more autonomy. And even at Creative Partnerships, managing huge budgets, I certainly received more autonomy than attention.

But the arms length feeling is with me anyway, as I deinstitutionalise my brain and body.

Arms length is also supposed to define the relationship between the UK state and the arts. My fellowship, in cultural policy, will explore this relationship, hopefully ask some new and relevant questions about whether 'arms length' is still a useful and meaningful concept, and maybe even recommend a new paradigm to shape the state-citizen-art trinity for the next sixty years.

Now if that isn't an arrogant aspiration, my next one certainly is.

Cultural policy in the UK over the past 60 years has not been without its failings and difficulties, but overall has contributed significantly to the success of the UK’s cultural sector. Through a combination of accident and design, we may have stumbled upon a set of policies, processes and relationships that go with the grain of wider societal changes, and could therefore have wider application. Through a critical analysis of how the UK state’s ‘arms length relationship’ with culture has worked and is working, cultural policy could provide a model that could influence all other policy areas, and inform new thinking about the state-citizen relationship and the role of the state. Anyone for an arms-length state?

The Arts in a Post-Bureaucratic age

Although dealing with the downturn is important, the arts sector should probably be spending as much time preparing for a Conservative government.

David Cameron, despite his dislike and careful avoidance of jargon, is using the phrase 'post-bureaucratic age' to summarise his approach to government and public services.

What does the phrase mean, and what might it mean for the arts?