The Department of Culture recently published a White Paper, the first from that department since Jennie Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in 1965, and apparently only its second ever. This chic pamphlet, in truth more PR exercise than policy document, prominently contains that new-age mantra, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153access must be increased for those from disadvantaged backgrounds\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. The Arts Council also write this sort of optimistic guff, and they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean it either. They only mean it if the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdisadvantaged\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 are prepared to like what the Arts Council want them to like. God forbid that the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdisadvantaged\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 should actually express preferences of their own. And this must echoes its 1965 predecessor \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they were on message then too: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The best must be made more widely available.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Imperative or not, nothing happened. The disadvantaged, and presumably they mean anyone who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t visit museums, weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seduced by free admission then and they won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be today, or tomorrow.<\/p>\n
If contemporary art fanatics had their way they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d make gallery attendance compulsory, requiring a form of mass re-education: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You will watch this interminable video by our favourite and extremely challenging blurry filmmaker from Kazakhstan … who we got plastered with three nights running at the Gwangdong Biennale.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Access to museums already being free, how might the disadvantaged be forced into submission? Two possible answers suggest themselves. You could round up pasty-faced skulkers on a sink estate, deposit them outside a museum and have the director and his staff fire kalashnikovs round their feet until they flee into the galleries. Alternatively, you could exhibit the sort of stuff which might appeal to these disadvantaged folk. A display of assault rifles, stillettos and machetes perhaps, or violent video games and snuff movies, or panoramic tellies with full Sky Sports and pornography packages. You might scatter burger boxes, skunk butts, crisp bags and beer tins under the pictures in order to make everyone feel at home. And why not offer them a couple of free ten-pound bets? That seems to work.<\/p>\n
Curiously, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no word in the White Paper about the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcadvantaged\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t visit museums. This includes most aristocrats. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re also thick, inbred, ill-mannered, drug-crazed and unemployable. And do tell me Squire Vaizey \u00e2\u20ac\u201c while I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got you on \u00e2\u20ac\u201c am I disadvantaged because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather have my teeth pulled by Hogarth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dentist than sit through an opera? Give me Buddy Holly any day than some caterwauling eyetie. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather divebomb naked with my mouth open into a slurry pit than sit through a ballet or a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmodern dance\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, whatever that is. Give me a Sergio\/Yaya one-two every time. No, let me go a-disadvantaging myself cabbing Deltics at Barrow Hill, or trudging across Rivvie Pike, or tending the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most expensive courgettes, or watching whimbrels where they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not supposed to be, or just having a few pints in the Cheshire Cheese (again). Rather any of these pastimes than visit a palace of bogus crap like Tate Modern. Am I disadvantaged? Are you talking to me? Well are you talking to me?<\/p>\n
This White Paper has the self-congratulatory, de-haut-en-bas tone associated with all Arts Council literature, which, suspiciously, this document closely resembles in appearance. Every page tells its own tinted porky-pie diagram and the most obsequious political correctness oozes like dripping from every letter. It has also decided, again like the Arts Council in its own PR, what the outcomes will be even before policies have been implemented: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They will be inspired by their experiences and will be encouraged to inspire others.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Talk about the Gestapo: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You vill be spired-in! Or you vill be shot!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Will this White Paper alter the social demographic of museum attendance which has remained static for decades? Not a hope.<\/p>\n
Squire, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been in more museums than you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had hot dinners and, yes, I am still seriously disadvantaged. Throughout my entire adult life I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been cheated by State Art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s monopoly force-feeding me a diet of conceptual and minimal trash of no discernible merit. The only thing I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been seriously disadvantaged by is State Art\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s prejudice against the sort of work which \u00e2\u20ac\u201c for all my peasant upbringing and scummy tastes \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always preferred to look at.<\/p>\n
![\"DCMS](\"http:\/\/www.thejackdaw.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/DCMS-White-Paper-disadvantaged-editorial.jpg\")
<\/a>May\/June 2016<\/em><\/p>\n