The Patrons and the Arts
In an age of increasing automation bringing more leisure to more people than ever before, both young and old will increasingly need the stimulus and refreshment that the arts can bring. If one side of life is highly mechanized, another side must provide for diversity, adventure, opportunities both to appreciate and to participate in a wide range of individual pursuits. An enlightened Goverment has a duty to respond to these needs.
THIS WAS the hope expressed in Jennie Lee's White Paper of 1965, A Policy for the Arts. It was expressed again thirteen years later in The Arts -- the Way Forward. 'We are moving towards a leisure society in which the arts will have a vital contribution to make to the quality of life and the promotion of human happiness.'
Technology was giving people more free time in developed countries, and what they did with their leisure was becoming a political concern. If they were to appreciate whatever the arts were held to be, they must be more educated towards the appreciation of them. The schools were better funded to do this, with an increasing investment in arts and scientific institutes of learning. The British Broadcasting Corporation was the fundamental instructor in music with its Third Programme and later Radio Four as the transmitters of the age, while television showed more and more serious drama and opera and the various fine arts. Such innovative programmes as the South Bank Show created a mass audience for international artists and writers, composers and musicians. The revolution in communications of the late twentieth century commanded the diffusion of the arts to the masses. It was not a question
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