The UK’s first Culture Secretary, Lord Chris Smith, offers a candid look behind the government’s closed doors.
In this episode of The Spotlight Podcast, we discuss how policy decisions directly impact careers and outline the crucial steps artists must take to make their voices heard and shape the future of the arts.
For many performers, the worlds of art and government can feel miles apart. We spend our lives in rehearsal rooms, on stages and in front of cameras, while the discussions and decisions that shape our industry happen behind closed doors in a city far away. Yet, these two worlds are deeply intertwined.
The government’s support of the arts – or lack thereof – has a direct and often profound impact on every facet of a performer’s life, from the health of a local theatre to the pay checks we receive.
In this exclusive interview, we sit down in The Spotlight Podcast studio with Lord Chris Smith, the first Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and a lifelong advocate for the performing arts. He offers a rare glimpse into how cultural policy is made, sharing fascinating stories and candid insights from his time at the heart of government.
Lord Chris Smith / Image credit: Chris McAndrew © HOUSE OF LORDS
From making national museums free to the public to rescuing regional theatres from financial ruin, Lord Smith’s experiences show how strategic policy can create lasting, positive change for the arts.
Beyond recounting his own achievements, Lord Smith shares his perspective on the current challenges facing the industry, including the rise of AI and the financial pressures on freelancers. He discusses the crucial role of collective action and offers practical advice on how performers can make their voices heard.
This conversation is not just a look back at the past – it’s a guide to understanding the systems that govern our work and an invitation to become an active participant in shaping the future of our industry.
Key Insights:
- Cultural policy is deeply intertwined with a performer’s life, directly impacting issues from regional theatre funding to accessibility and pay.
- Lord Chris Smith’s achievements, like making national museums free and rescuing regional theatres, show how strategic government action creates lasting positive change in the arts.
- Performers must collectively organise to be heard, as governments tend to prioritise institutions over individuals when making policy decisions, especially concerning new challenges like AI and copyright.
Take a listen:
Full Transcript:
Welcome to The Spotlight Podcast! Could you please tell us a bit about yourself?
I’m Chris Smith. I was the Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury for 22 years. I became Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport from 1997 to 2001. I went back to the back benches. I led the parliamentary opposition to the Iraq War two years later and then I stepped down from the House of Commons in 2005.
Since then, I spent eight years on the board of the National Theatre. I was the chair of the board at the Donmar Warehouse for something like 13 or 14 years. I am currently on the board of English National Opera and I’m on the board of the trustees of the 16. So, I’ve tried to keep my hand in on the performing arts.
There is something about a live performance that really speaks to you […] it has the power to move you almost more than anything.
Where do your interests lie within performing arts and the creative industry?
I’m a bit of a polymath. I like a broad range of art types, whether it’s theatre, music, or opera. I just think there is something about a live performance that really speaks to you very strongly and it has the power to move you almost more than anything.
I remember just before the first lockdown happened, Ian Bostridge came to my college in Cambridge to sing Winterreise and it was a very intimate setting. There were about 50 or 60 people in the room and he gave a wonderful performance. As he came to an end, as his voice tailed away right at the end of Winterreise, there was complete silence in the room for at least a minute. And then we all stood up and started cheering. It was that magical moment at the end of a performance when it just sinks in how wonderful it has been.
What are some of your highlights during your time as Secretary of State?
Well, I would put at the top of my list the fact that I managed to make all the national museums and galleries free for everyone and it’s still in place. I’m really proud of having done it and it took me four years to achieve.
There was a wonderful moment on the day that they all went free, the Science Museum invited me to come back and cut a ribbon and throw open the doors and we had a nice little ceremony. About half an hour later, I was wandering around in the foyer of the museum and this young man carrying his little daughter on his shoulders was making a beeline towards me. And as he came up to me, he turned his face to his daughter and he said, “I want you to say thank you to this man. It’s because of him we’re able to be here today.” And that was the moment when I thought, “Perhaps, actually, a career in politics has been worth it after all.” So that would be absolutely top of my list.
I would also say I was able to rejuvenate and rescue regional theatre around the country. I was able to produce lots of extra funding for the arts, especially after the initial two years in government, because we’d been committed to keeping to the previous spending plans that we inherited for the first two years. And then, suddenly, we were able to move forward in a serious way and I managed to achieve some of the largest increases in funding for the arts that we’ve ever seen.
How did you manage to persuade the Treasury to support free museums?
Initially, I had to persuade a slightly reluctant prime minister that it was worth doing in principle. He now talks about it as one of the great achievements of his government. I then had to persuade a far more reluctant Chancellor of the Exchequer to give me some extra money.
And one of my special advisors – worth their weight in gold – managed to find an article that Gordon Brown, who had then become Chancellor, had written when he was a student, advocating free access to museums. We were able to go to him and wave it at him and the argument became much easier at that point.
Do you think there’s an argument for subsidising theatre to make it more accessible?
I think there’s certainly an argument for getting people, especially young people, to experience theatre for the first time and providing them with an incentive to do that. We have a scheme at English National Opera, for example, where anyone under the age of 21 can come for free. And we get lots of first-time visits to the Coliseum as a result of that. The hope, of course, is that those people who come and really enjoy the experience will want to keep on coming.
I think incentive schemes of that kind are invaluable in providing people with the initial experience. Exactly the same was the case at both the National Theatre and the Donmar with £10 ticket schemes that very often had people coming for the first time ever to the theatre. It’s getting them over the threshold and giving them a wonderful experience and then that’s something they themselves want to develop further. That’s the key, I think.
Kristyn Coutts: And then hopefully we get a whole new raft of actors coming in who want to showcase their stories on stage and screen and that’s what it’s all about.
Can you explain a little bit about what the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is, how it came to be and what its responsibilities are?
It was originally created as the Department for National Heritage and I demanded that we had to change the name, because as important as heritage is, it didn’t cover anything like the whole spread of what DCMS does.
I have to say, I very much hope that when this podcast emerges, DCMS will still be in place, because there are horrible rumours circulating in some bits of the press about the likelihood that DCMS may be abolished and its responsibilities distributed amongst other departments. That would be a tragedy, because DCMS is able to focus on the arts and sport and media in a very concentrated way. If the arts are simply put into a bit of the education department, they will lose salience, they’ll lose impact, they’ll lose attention and it would be really detrimental to the way in which the arts ought to be supported by the government.
The department was originally created really specifically for one person. It was John Major’s government and John Major was very close to David Mellor, who had been in the cabinet. I think he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury beforehand. David was passionate about art and sport and music and media. The urban myth is that John Major created the department because it was all the things that David Mellor was interested in. But actually, it makes a lot of sense to have all of these things together because they’re all things that really matter to people’s lives.
I remember in the run-up to the 1997 election, I had been the Shadow Secretary of State for Health and I became the Secretary of State for Culture. And a friend said to me that night, he said, “You know the difference between health and culture? Health is a sine qua non (something that’s absolutely necessary), culture is a raison d’être (the most important purpose for something’s existence).” There’s a profound truth buried in that observation. Most government departments are about things which are necessary for people’s lives. DCMS is about things that are at the heart of people’s lives and interests and souls.
Kristyn Coutts: It makes life worth living.
Lord Chris Smith: They are the things that make life worth living. So there is a lot of logic in putting them together in a department of their own.
The creative industries are a really important part of national life and they are important economically.
What impact does DCMS have on the creative industry?
One of the things I realised very early on in my time as Secretary of State was that we all knew that the arts and sport and such like were important aesthetically for people’s souls and minds. But I also realised that they were fundamentally important economically as well. I also realised that no one had a go at establishing exactly how important economically they were.
So, one of the very first things I did, I set up the Creative Industries Taskforce to look at how important the creative industries were to the national economy. We were astonished when we did the figures and found that they were responsible for something like 6 or 7% of GDP. They were growing faster than any other part of the national economy and they were employing well over a million people.
The creative industries are a really important part of national life and they are important economically. They are also, of course, important artistically and aesthetically and you have to hold both these importance’s very much in the forefront of your mind.
Do you think that because we’re punching above our weight in the UK economy, that it helps conversations about greater investment in the arts?
It does. One of the things that I was very conscious of when I was Secretary of State was that there was no point in going to the Treasury and talking about beauty and truth. The only thing the Treasury will understand is the impact on the economy, on jobs, on national wealth, on education and so forth. So, I made all of those arguments and they undoubtedly helped in extracting more money out of the Treasury.
If the theatre goes dark, the community loses something that is really important to it.
Can you talk through how policy development works in DCSM and how that impacts an actor or a performer in their everyday lives?
Well, let me give you an example: the rescuing of regional theatre. I started to get representations from all over the country – I remember Alan Ayckbourn came with a delegation to see me – and what was becoming very clear was that the regional theatres everywhere were in dire financial straits.
They weren’t able to mend the leaking roofs. They had buckets sitting in corridors catching drips. They weren’t able to put on plays with more than two actors because they couldn’t afford it. They were entirely dependent on the Christmas panto to make money. They had to have dark periods because they couldn’t afford to be running all the time. And what was also obvious was this wasn’t just a disaster for the theatres, but it was a disaster for the towns as well, because these were matters of civic pride to a local community. If the theatre goes dark, the community loses something that is really important to it.
And so, having had all these representations, I did two things. I went to the Treasury and I said, “This is a serious problem. I need to have an extra dedicated amount each year for the arts budget, specifically for regional theatre.” And simultaneously, I persuaded Labour MPs all around the country to go and bend Gordon Brown’s ear about how important their local theatre was to their constituency and their prospects of re-election.
The combination of my request to the Treasury and the earbashing he was getting from all these MPs from around the country was very successful. He gave me £25 million per year, specifically labelled for regional theatre.
I then got the Arts Council, I said, “Here’s £25 million more each year. It has to be spent on regional theatre.” So, they got Michael Boyden to do a review of all the regional theatres around the country and they came up with a plan of who should get what and which place should get what.
It was a classic example of the arm’s length principle operating as it should – the Secretary of State deciding that there is a crucial problem, securing the money and saying, “This is for regional theatre.” But then, the individual town-by-town decisions were taken by the experts who were genuinely experts in the Arts Council at the time. The result was a complete rejuvenation of regional theatre. It worked. And that was a good example of policymaking happening as it should.
It shouldn’t take the stars who are household names to shout about something to get any notice taken. There should be mechanisms for getting the views of performers coming through into the making of policy.
I think there’s a feeling that performers’ voices are often overlooked when it comes to policy development. What do you think could be done to change this?
It’s a really interesting question, because of course, many actors and performers are freelancers. And when we had the furlough scheme at the time of COVID and lockdowns, people sort of forgot about freelancers. It was only because a big fuss was made that something eventually was done.
But we need to make sure that the voice of performers, especially freelance performers, is heard in terms of the making of policy. Governments tend to listen to the institutions, they tend to listen to the companies, they listen to the Arts Council, they don’t necessarily listen to performers.
A classic example is happening at the moment. The campaign to get the Data Access Bill made better, because the government is running down a rabbit hole in search of AI and they are throwing copyright to the wolves in the process. Copyright is actually really important for creative enterprise and the fact that Elton John and Paul McCartney and others are standing up and shouting about it is beginning to get some traction with the government. But it shouldn’t take the stars who are household names to shout about something to get any notice taken. There should be mechanisms for getting the views of performers coming through into the making of policy.
Do you have any suggestions about how performers can go about making their voice heard?
What would be really useful is if we could get something in the same way that UK music exists, which brings together both the performer community and the record labels. They are pretty effective at lobbying the government and advising on policy. In exactly the same way, why don’t we get groups of performers coming together and having an organisation that speaks for them and will be listened to?
Our sector’s going through quite a period of change at the moment with AI, the loss of advertising revenue, streaming platforms, etc. All of those things affect performers. How can performers know when a new policy is being discussed in order to have their say?
There’s a bit of a role for the specialised press in alerting people to what is being done. There’s a bit of a role for the collecting societies in alerting their members to what’s happening. There’s a bit of a role for podcasts to raise warning flags and to encourage people to make their voice heard.
I think if we did manage to get a group of performers together to try and be a voice for the profession, it would enormously help. There is also, I have to say, a role for both The Musicians’ Union and Equity in helping to inform and enlighten their members and to act as a bit of a channel coming forward.
How do you strike a balance between different conflicting voices? For example, if performers want a different thing to production creators.
The tension will, I suspect, always be there and the only way of coping with that tension is to encourage both sides of the equation – both the performers and the creators. Both the workers and the performers realise that they are together in the same boat. Fighting each other is totally unproductive, if not counterproductive. But if they make common cause, then that way lies progress for everyone.
The BBC, Arts Council and other big institutions come into DCSM’s remit, as does The National Lottery. Does that help or hinder the development of government policy?
I’m tempted to say neither, because it doesn’t hinder the development of policy, but I’m not sure it helps either. You tend to get the Arts Council or the BBC looking after itself, rather than looking after or making representations on behalf of its sector.
We have a problem with the Arts Council at the moment. I think it’s generally recognised that the Arts Council is not in particularly good shape at the moment, but when they make representations to government, they tend to be very defensive about themselves. They’re not doing the lobbying of the government that the sector as a whole needs. Exactly the same is true of the BBC. They will be fighting their own corner. They won’t necessarily be fighting the corner for all the performers that they engage.
I don’t think big institutions like the BBC or the Arts Council, certainly not knowingly, would want to act to damage performers and their interests. I’m not sure that they necessarily particularly advocate for them.
Can you talk a little bit about how you helped shape The National Lottery?
The National Lottery was dreamed up by John Major, so it was already in place by the time I became Secretary of State. I changed some of the ways in which it was being used. In its early incarnation, it had been used primarily for big capital projects, famously the Opera House or other major nationally important projects.
One of the things I was determined to do was to enable the Lottery to be used for supporting people and activities, as well as supporting capital projects. I think that was an important move. You still need to try and ensure that the Lottery is only used for things that are additional to work that’s being done through taxation income. And that principle of additionality is really important to preserve. You don’t want the Lottery substituting for tax income, but using it more flexibly was something that I was determined to do.
For example, I set up the Foundation for Youth Music. It’s still on the go. We made a grant of £10 million a year from The National Lottery to the Foundation for Youth Music. It was all about getting young people making music at weekends and [was] really successful. I’m delighted it’s still absolutely thriving.
Additional investment from the Lottery was a game-changer for the sector. Was that always part of the plan?
I think it was. It wasn’t my idea to set up the Lottery. That was John Major’s, and it was a rather brilliant idea. Focusing it on the arts and sport and communities and charities was a stroke of genius, because it was all about the things, as we said earlier on, that make life worth living. It’s really important that the Lottery wasn’t there to substitute for other expenditure but was there to do the extras that illuminated people’s lives.
Do you have any insight into how it’s decided where the funding goes?
The various Lottery distributors make their own decisions. In relation to the arts, the Arts Council is the primary decision-making body. In relation to heritage, it’s the Heritage Lottery Fund. By and large, I think that’s okay. Having expert bodies making the decisions about how the funding should be distributed in any particular sector feels right to me. It should absolutely not be the Secretary of State making those decisions.
Final question: What’s the last thing you saw at the theatre or you watched on screen that you enjoyed and would recommend to other people?
The last time I went to the theatre was to see Kyoto. I have to say, when I first heard about a piece of theatre that had been created out of an environmental United Nations summit, I thought, “How on earth can you make this really sing on the stage?” It’s brilliant. It’s a wonderful night in the theatre and I highly recommend it.
The last film I saw, well, amongst the last films I saw, because one of the rather wonderful things that happened when I stopped being Secretary of State was that BAFTA got in touch and said, “We want to say thank you for everything you’ve done for the film industry whilst you’ve been Secretary of State, so we want to make you an honorary life member.” So, I spend my Christmas and New Year every year viewing BAFTA movies.
I loved A Complete Unknown. I thought it was just brilliant and I voted for it for best movie. Sadly, it didn’t win, but I thought it was a bravura performance by Timothée Chalamet, and I love Dylan’s music, so it was great.
In Summary:
This conversation is not just a look back at the past; it’s an invitation to become an active participant in the systems that govern your work. Lord Smith’s experience proves that strategic, informed action can create lasting, positive change. Here are the crucial takeaways for navigating the intersection of arts and policy:
- Never assume government decisions happen in a distant, separate world; cultural policy directly affects things like the health of local theatres and your pay.
- Actively work with fellow freelancers and organisations like Equity to create a unified, powerful voice, because individual performers are too often overlooked by policymakers.
- Understand the dual importance of the arts — economic and aesthetic — and be prepared to use both arguments when advocating for funding or support.
- Stay vigilant for policy changes like those concerning AI and copyright by engaging with professional bodies and industry news to ensure your rights are protected.
The Spotlight Podcast is recorded in our Central London studios. The Spotlight voice over booth is available to hire for demo reads, voice over work, podcasts and more.
