When John Major was UK prime minister, he had enthusiastically pushed for the creation of the National Lottery Fund, supporting the arts, culture and sports. In his autobiography, he later described it as “the most successful innovation of any government for years”.
Since 1992, this fund has transformed arts and culture in England, restoring and designing arts buildings, touring art works, creating jobs and training, while giving an element of sustainable and independent funding to the UK arts sector.
Last week the government announced that it would be setting up a new arts fund in Malta, comparing it to the UK National Lottery Fund. Instead of a sustainable source, however, this fund will depend on one of the most unsustainable and contentious new directions of our construction industry – high-rise buildings. These have been the bête noire of environmental debates for quite a few years now.
The government, and anyone in the arts who supports this scheme, must be hoping for a continual stream of high-rise buildings sprouting up all over the place, year after year, to provide funding. Is this really the long-term plan for the arts? Malta will be unrecognisable but, hey, there will be art exhibitions, dancers and musical concerts among the burgeoning concrete slabs. The end will justify the means, my friends. Let’s have games, bread and circuses while Rome burns.
Last year, the government had said that Malta could be the Dubai of the Mediterranean. Other than promoting tall buildings and land reclamation, however, so far it has not explained how Dubai presents an economic model for Malta to emulate.
The idea that construction can be Malta’s motor of economic growth is completely outdated. That it should now also specifically be the motor of our arts industry is even worse. Construction and land speculation can’t be the magic solution for everything.
Just as new UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is being lambasted for promoting old policies of the 1980s, which were rejected years ago, so our own government is looking back far too often.
The reintroduction of finch trapping, the bloating of the public sector, easier development permits, government secrecy, cosying up to China and totalitarian regimes and separating environment from planning are all blasts from the past. Land reclamation is back on the table. Construction as the lynchpin of growth is part of this trend backwards.
Any funds that developers contribute as planning gain should benefit those who must live with the impact
People sometimes argue that it is better to build high than take up more land, but this is not the reality around us. The countryside is being eaten up daily, through large projects like the university at Żonqor, as well as storerooms, building extensions, illegal buildings, petrol stations, quarries, farms, spas, hotels and sports facilities. We are expanding up and sideways at the same time.
Obliging large commercial projects to give funds for public projects is known as planning gain. The principle is that since the project may negatively affect the neighbourhood, such as through pressure on parking spaces, it should give something back to the community. The planning authority collects these funds, which are then used to improve public spaces.
Asking developers to subsidise the arts is a completely different idea. Staging a song competition in Birgu or Rabat will not give anything back to the Sliema or Gżira community affected by a high-rise building. Giving a scholarship to an arts student will not compensate for lost parking spaces and inconvenience in Qawra or Mrieħel. Any funds that developers contribute as planning gain should benefit those who must live with the impact of their commercial activities.
Seriously, it is great that the government wants to support the arts, but it should offer more suitable sources of funding. Over the years, arts and heritage have always been cash-strapped. The problem is not lack of funds, but that they are never enough of a priority. They are always first to drop from the list when budget decisions are taken.
This is why Major’s National Lottery Fund was so successful. It ring-fenced a source of revenue, not raised through taxes, for arts and culture. Countless projects all over England have been supported by the lottery over the last 20 years.
Major explained that MPs are not disinterested in the arts, but are overwhelmed by competing demands which take precedence. He had advocated that lottery money for the arts should therefore be kept distinct and never used for other government schemes.
The government can propose various sources of funding for the arts, if it wishes to do so. The idea of coupling arts funding with the excesses of the construction industry, and with high-rise in particular, is unusual and inappropriate.
A few major high-rise projects, such as Town Square at Qui-si-Sana and the business towers at Mrieħel, will be coming into the public eye very soon, as plans have matured. They are likely to be controversial. Talk of a nature park at Żonqor was intended to soften opposition by environmental NGOs and the public, to construction on ODZ land.
Similarly, announcing that developers will now subsidise the arts may help to sweeten the high-rise pill.
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