You may well have missed it among the 24\/7 horrorshow known as \u201cthe news\u201d, but earlier this year the UK government launched something called the UK Soft Power Council.<\/p>\n
Launched by then foreign secretary David Lammy (who is no longer in the job) and culture secretary Lisa Nandy (who, to most people\u2019s surprise, including probably hers, is) the council is aimed at helping \u201cboost UK economic growth and security by bringing together experts from across culture, sport, the creative industries and geopolitics\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the Premier League and\u00a0Peaky Blinders\u00a0to Adele and the BBC World Service, Britain\u2019s cultural exports showcase the best of Britain around the world,\u201d said Nandy, and while politicians burbling on about cultural assets tends towards the grating \u2013 all a bit Hugh Grant\u2019s \u201cDavid Beckham\u2019s right foot, David Beckham\u2019s left foot, come to that\u201d \u2013 it does raise a fair point. Culture is something we\u2019re still good at. People associate us with it. The GVA (gross value added) of the creative industries was estimated at \u00a3123.03bn last year, or 5.37% of total UK GVA.<\/p>\n
Which sort of begs the question: why are we deliberately hamstringing ourselves?<\/p>\n
This week, a row which has been brewing for some time in the UK\u2019s musical community spilled into the open. There has been disquiet among many musicians about why, they feel, the Musicians\u2019 Union has been doing so little to lobby government over the hugely damaging effects Brexit has had on those wishing to tour on the continent.<\/p>\n
Brexit has been a disaster for most sectors, but especially if you previously made your living playing music across Europe. UK musicians\u2019 touring in Europe has fallen by around 9% year-on-year since Britain left the bloc. Red tape rules: visas are required for people, carnets \u2013 international customs documents \u2013 for every single piece of equipment. You got a triangle solo on that nine-minute opus? You need a form for that (\u201cI kind of got in a band to not fill in forms, you know what I mean?\u201d Rick McMurray of the Britpop group Ash told me when I spoke to him about this a couple of years ago).<\/p>\n
And Ash have a record company behind them to dot the Is and cross the Ts. What about the young musicians and artists who don\u2019t have that level of bureaucratic support, or the funding that underpins it? For every Oasis there are a thousand bands and orchestras out there being denied the opportunities afforded to generations before them. There\u2019s a reason Beatles biographies aren\u2019t full of details of forms Ringo had to fill in for each of his drumsticks.<\/p>\n
An open letter to the Musicians\u2019 Union from a body calling itself EU Flags Team \u2013 the ones who upset the\u00a0Daily Telegraph\u00a0every year by handing out EU flags at the Proms \u2013 accuses it of a \u201cdisconnect with [its] membership\u201d saying that \u201cthe silence was deafening\u201d on Brexit at this year\u2019s annual conference. It demands \u201ca high-profile public campaign, coordinated with the wider arts sector, targeting both UK and EU policymakers\u201d. (It is true that there are more articles on the campaigns page of the union\u2019s website on the lack of spots for buskers in Birmingham than there are about Brexit.)<\/p>\n
But internal disputes needn\u2019t concern us if the government itself simply took up the cudgels on behalf of this vital sector. It should not be beyond the wit of the UK and EU to get a scheme in place for restoring work access for both British and European musicians. It would be a simple win for both sides. It would boost cultural engagement. It would be good economically. And it wouldn\u2019t upset anybody. Even the shrillest\u00a0Mail\u00a0columnist, of whom Keir Starmer\u2019s government remains too timid, would struggle to whip up fervour over Bulgarian harpists coming over here and entertaining us.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are determined to strengthen our soft power abroad, and in turn deliver a major boost to our economy, as we focus on our missions to create jobs and spread opportunity across the UK,\u201d said Nandy when she launched her new body earlier this year. Here\u2019s an idea, then: do something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You may well have missed it among the 24\/7 horrorshow known as \u201cthe news\u201d, but earlier this year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[42521,802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,269,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-419841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-arts-and-culture","9":"tag-brexit","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-music","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115194318309821028","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}