While there\u2019s been an upturn since the last general election, this has leaned towards capital investment<\/a> in buildings and infrastructure, with uneven gains<\/a> for the recurrent, day-to-day funding that sustains programming, jobs and artists\u2019 livelihoods.<\/p>\n So, what might the sector expect from a government led by a former holder of the culture brief, given Treasury habits of treating culture as a second-order priority, rather than a key part of the national fabric?<\/p>\n Burnham\u2019s more recent record as mayor of Greater Manchester<\/a> suggests a commitment that goes beyond club anecdotes about the Ha\u00e7ienda and his well-documented indie music fandom<\/a>. As mayor, Burnham commissioned an independent Greater Manchester Music Review with UK Music, launched in 2018 and published in 2019. This considered financial and equalities barriers<\/a>, leading to a regional Music Commission<\/a> with artists, venues, and industry brought into the room with civic decision-makers.<\/p>\n This article is part of our State of the Arts<\/a> series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry \u2013 and celebrate the wins, too.<\/em><\/p>\n He also explicitly backed a \u00a31 ticket levy on major arena-scale events to support grassroots venues, and a VAT cut for music venues, along with supporting the \u201cagent of change\u201d<\/a> principle, which shifts the cost of soundproofing buildings on to developers making changes to an area, rather than pre-existing venues.<\/p>\n This suggests the application of a relatively consistent understanding of culture beyond a decorative add-on \u2013 as economic and civic infrastructure through jobs, the nighttime economy<\/a> and a touring pipeline.<\/p>\n But translating that into engagement with the sector will be a longer process. Culture secretary Lisa Nandy \u2013 retained in the cabinet reshuffle \u2013 has faced some scepticism from the sector. She is seen as better at diagnosis than delivery and had previously been mooted for a move<\/a>. <\/p>\n Keeping Nandy in post, though, could be read less as inertia than alignment. The two are political allies<\/a>, with broadly similar instincts, and Burnham\u2019s reconfiguration of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to include \u201cdigital\u201d \u2013 introduced during Theresa May\u2019s government before it lost the brief in 2023 \u2013 reflects a deliberate framing<\/a> that \u201cculture and technology are inseparable drivers of our modern economy\u201d.<\/p>\n At tech and culture festival SXSW London<\/a> in June, Nandy spoke publicly about the government\u2019s course correction on AI<\/a>, rowing back on the \u201copt-out\u201d plan for AI training on copyrighted work and acknowledging the need for a more nuanced approach to the competing demands of different parts of the creative industries. Retaining Nandy while fundamentally restructuring her department suggests Burnham\u2019s bet is primarily on institutional change and the machinery itself helping to determine outcomes.<\/p>\n The test will be in the execution. Nandy\u2019s publication in July of Turn It Up<\/a>, the government\u2019s first comprehensive music plan, offers a preliminary gauge.<\/p>\n Its ten priority areas include \u00a345m in targeted grassroots investment, licensing reform and agent-of-change protections. A further \u00a3150m of creative funding is devolved through mayoral strategic authorities. Taken together, this suggests a focus on infrastructure policy that moves beyond cultural cheerleading. Whether that machinery accelerates delivery, or simply redistributes the familiar frictions across new layers of bureaucracy, will take longer to establish.<\/p>\n Turn It Up predates Burnham\u2019s premiership, but its devolutionary impetus of funding, routed through mayoral hands, runs with the grain of his wider agenda. Rewiring the State<\/a>, published within his first fortnight, extends the same logic to the whole of government. Devolution, in this case, refers to England: decisions and funding are shifted from Whitehall to local leaders, with mayors retaining a share of locally raised revenue.<\/p>\n There are limits to reading Greater Manchester as a template. What worked there rested on conditions not necessarily replicable nationwide: a large conurbation with an established music economy, strong civic institutions, and a mayor with personal capital in the sector. Devolving decisions on culture to mayors relies on the will to prioritise it and, crucially, on authorities having the capacity and revenue base to act.<\/p>\n For smaller cities and towns outside the combined authority framework there\u2019s a chance that \u201cManchesterism<\/a>\u201d could be something of a spectator sport. The talent pipeline is also under pressure from a direction the plan barely touches \u2013 arts provision<\/a> in higher education is contracting as the universities\u2019 financial crisis<\/a> bites, with courses closing across the country.<\/p>\n Nor does devolution resolve the underlying settlement: day-to-day funding for programming and livelihoods still depends substantially on Treasury decisions, and a first fortnight dominated by the cost of living, social care and the BBC Charter is a reminder of how quickly governmental bandwidth is absorbed.<\/p>\n Even so, there\u2019s cause for cautious optimism. A prime minister who has held the culture brief, run a music review, and defended grassroots venues in planning disputes seems not to need persuading of the basic case.<\/p>\n The structural approach \u2013 building culture into how places are funded and governed, rather than leaving it to plead its corner in Whitehall \u2013 is at least a plausible wager. Whether it pays off remains to be seen. But for once, the arts seem not to be starting the argument from scratch.<\/p>\n Adam Behr has received funding from the British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beyond the rapid turnover of prime ministers in recent years (seven in the last 15 years), there\u2019s been an even higher churn in other roles, notably that of culture secretary \u2013 12 in the same period, and 18 since the post was first introduced in 1997. Of these, Andy Burnham is the first to achieve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More than the Ha\u00e7ienda<\/h2>\n
\n
\nThe devolution wager<\/h2>\n
Cautious optimism<\/h2>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/counter.theconversation.com\/content\/289160\/count.gif\")
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