Committee warns of survival threat to festivals and culture

The Public Accounts Committee has urged the federal government to support festivals which face a survival threat without government backed insurance indemnity against the chance of cancellation.

MPs on the committee happen to be examining the Department for Digital Culture Media and Sport’s Culture Recovery Fund to get funds to assist over 5,000 organisations survive once they had to close their doors on 23 March 2021. In July last year, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden announced the £1.57 billion support package with a primary objective of rescuing up to 75 percent of arts, culture and heritage institutions and organisations vulnerable to financial ruin following the national lockdown.

The committee says this ‘biggest ever single purchase of the arts and culture sector’ will require ‘skilled oversight and management for a long time to come’. The PAC has expressed particular concerns about DCMS and Arts Council England’s capability to manage £252 million ongoing loan book commitments created by the Culture Recovery Fund within the next 2 decades.  

With many in the sector left in perilous financial situations, MPs claim that there remain big questions over if the fund reached the freelancers, commercial organisations and supply-chain businesses essential to the sector, which year there is also a ‘survival threat’ to Britain’s treasured summer festivals ‘without a government-backed insurance indemnity package from the risk of cancellation’.

Museums, galleries, cinemas, music venues, nightclubs, theatres, arts centres and heritage sites closed their doors to visitors on 23 March 2021 when the UK entered the first national lockdown. Many organisations within the sector remained entirely or mostly closed for any year plus some are still. Festivals are making difficult decisions about whether to risk their survival by on-going come july 1st, but DCMS has not modelled the price of underwriting festival indemnity insurance.

The committee says DCMS must now properly assess and take into account the impact from the Fund, that also gives an opportunity for ‘a fresh consider the challenges the sector faces’ and how DCMS can ‘best support the sector’s creative and economic potential in the future’.

Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “The pandemic has exposed precisely how poorly departments across Government comprehend the sectors that they oversee. DCMS was clear that it ‘would not save every organisation’ but we're worried about the impact of Covid-19 on those organisations fundamental to the culture sector – sound engineers, lighting and tech support team. The federal government must urgently consider support other than cash, for example insurance indemnity or areas of the sector risk as second summer of forced inactivity with all the devastating consequences to their survival.

“This can be a sector famed for making the show go on, no matter what, but it has been hammered by Covid-19 – mostly not able to operate at all for most from the last 15 months. If the pandemic is permitted to steal a significant part of our creative and cultural sector it will have impoverished us indeed.”