London culture ahead of Paris and New York

A new fund for Arts in London was launched yesterday with backing from Kevin Spacey, director of the Old Vic, and Bonnie Greer – author of Marilyn and Ella.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone explained the £1.4mn pot will be used to back events and projects particularly initiating from the smaller arts bodies in the period of the run-up to the 2012 World Olympic games in East London. Applications from arts groups are invited from this autumn, 2008. Administration is by the Arts Council and is intended to make up for some of the money used up by the Games from the National Lottery, which was originally intended only for ‘good causes’ that wouldn’t otherwise be funded.

The cash itself is coming from the London Development Agency which has released a cultural audit of London which showed that London is way ahead of rivals including Paris and New York when it comes to cultural matters in everything from theatre to light music.

The report is the first quantitative overview of London’s cultural environment, which it compares with that of four world cities – New York, Paris, Tokyo and Shanghai.

In the Foreward, Mayor Ken says

“In recent years London has risen to become what is almost certainly the world’s top business centre. London is justifiably proud of this achievement, and of the people, enterprises, investors and institutions which have helped to shape and govern London’s economy.

But a purely commercial focus risks losing sight of what has made London successful. The dramatic growth of its finance and business services industries in the last thirty years draws on wider resources. London is now, and has always been, the crossroads of world trade and world culture. Its financial success is built on this foundation.
London’s greatest strength is its people.

London is witnessing an expansion of cultural and artistic life not seen for decades. From the Tate Modern and its world-renowned South Bank, through to investments in art education down to its cutting-edge designer-maker studios, cultural investments are expanding and renewing London’s priceless cultural assets.

Showcasing and promoting these achievements through events such as London Fashion Week, Frieze Art Fair, London Film Festival and Design Week are a vital objective of my cultural strategy. A wide and expanding range of carnivals celebrate London’s world cultures, combining with its cultural attractions to bring twice as many visitors to London as New York and 50% more than Paris.”

Judith Woodward continues:

“We have to conclude that a strong contribution to London’s success is because it is home to a world of culture as distinctive and glamorous as the cafés of Paris or the skyscrapers of New York. Its art scene, skyline, festivals, music and theatres, museums, cinemas and galleries, filmmakers, scriptwriters, actors and broadcasters, and its vibrant artistic and literary community are unique, yet emphatically part of a world culture.

Home to speakers of 300 languages, the city is linked by ties of trade and travel to their communities of origin. Seat of a world language of literature which is now the unchallenged world language of science and business, its culture distils and transforms ideas and influences that span the globe.
This makes London’s culture an asset beyond imitation. Its importance stretches beyond the enjoyment it provides, work it offers, or money it earns. With the city’s people and its institutions, it makes London what it is. This report aims to simply to provide a measurable record of the main activities that comprise it. But the story it reveals should give food for thought to policy-makers in many fields.”

Here is the section from the report which concerns theatre:

Theatre

Looking at the consumption of theatre across the cities, a familiar pattern emerges. London and New York’s predominantly commercial theatre scenes are broadly comparable, with a difference of only 100,000 admissions separating them. As noted previously, although London has a slight edge in terms of the number of consumers, these are spread across a greater number of venues. As table 6.3 shows, the total value of theatre admissions, in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) dollars, gives Broadway the edge when compared with London’s theatreland. This is perhaps unsurprising given the lack of public investment in theatre in New York. Ticket receipts therefore play a correspondingly larger role in financing theatre in New York than in the other cities.
Although London appears to generate less revenue from theatre admissions than Tokyo, it should be noted that the figures for Tokyo and Shanghai unavoidably include revenues for admissions to live music events. Even here, when the value of theatre sales is scaled against population, London has the second highest per capita figure at $89 PPP. The real surprise is the figures for Paris, which are very low. Further research would be necessary to understand why this might be, as the figures for Paris were sourced from the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, and have been checked again for accuracy.

Table 6.3 consumption of the theatre in the five comparator cities