Made in England — Celebration, Self‑Mythology, and the Limits of Commemoration
To mark 80 years of public investment in culture and creativity, the Arts Council has published Made in England: Art and Culture in Changing Times – a collection of essays, insights and creative contributions from artists, cultural leaders and critics. The book explores the role art and culture play in England today, and looks ahead to how creativity might shape the next 80 years.
1 Introduction
Made in England: Art and Culture in Changing Times is presented as a celebration of 80 years of public investment in creativity — a polished anniversary volume designed to showcase the Arts Council’s achievements, its values, and its national reach. Yet beneath its confident rhetoric and carefully curated success stories lies a deeper truth: the book functions less as a reflection on England’s cultural reality and more as a piece of institutional self‑mythology. It reinforces a narrative of continuity at precisely the moment when continuity is the problem.
This critique places Made in England — and Darren Henley’s chapter, Excellence. For Everybody. Everywhere. — in their proper context. It examines how the book selectively frames history, omits structural inequities, and avoids the systemic failures documented by the Hodge Review, the National Audit Office, the PLACE data and decades of evidence on artform imbalance. It shows how Henley’s contribution, while rhetorically fluent, mirrors the same patterns: anecdotal geography, universalist aspiration, and a refusal to confront the hierarchy of culture embedded in Arts Council England’s decisions since 1946.
Taken together, the book and Henley’s essay reveal the limits of ACE’s worldview — its reliance on narrative over analysis, its avoidance of structural reform, and its inability to articulate a strategy capable of delivering cultural democracy. This introduction therefore sets the stage for a deeper examination of why a New Deal for the Arts and Music is not simply desirable but necessary: because England needs an architecture for the next 80 years, not another celebration of the last.
2 The Arts Council’s Made in England: Art and Culture in Changing Times
The Arts Council’s Made in England: Art and Culture in Changing Times presents itself as a celebration of “80 years of public investment in creativity,” a curated anthology of essays, reflections and case studies designed to showcase the transformative power of public funding. It is beautifully produced, emotionally resonant, and politically purposeful. But as a cultural artefact, it reveals far more about Arts Council England’s self‑image than about the real conditions of cultural life in England. The book is not simply commemorative; it is a strategic narrative crafted at a moment when ACE’s legitimacy is under unprecedented scrutiny.
Sir Nicholas Serota’s introduction sets the tone. He frames the Arts Council’s founding as a heroic act of postwar civic imagination, rooted in Keynes’s wartime vision of carrying “music, drama and pictures to places which otherwise would be cut off from all contact with masterpieces of happier days.” This is a powerful origin story — but it is also selective. Serota emphasises the arm’s‑length principle, artistic freedom, and the twin commitments to “excellence” and “access,” yet he does not acknowledge the structural realities that have shaped ACE’s decisions for eight decades: the hierarchy of culture embedded since 1946, the dominance of opera and classical institutions, the erosion of Lottery additionality, the collapse of local authority funding, and the long‑term marginalisation of jazz, popular, world, folk, brass bands, grassroots and multi‑genre musics.
The book’s narrative is celebratory rather than analytical. It foregrounds individual success stories — David Harewood’s journey from Birmingham to RADA, Carlos Acosta’s path from Havana to the Royal Ballet, Lubaina Himid’s reflections on the Arts Council Collection — each demonstrating the personal impact of public funding. These stories matter deeply. They show how access, training and early investment can transform lives. But they are curated to reinforce ACE’s preferred story: that public funding works, that ACE is a benevolent steward of talent, and that the system is fundamentally sound.
What is missing is the structural context. Harewood’s account of receiving an Arts Council grant to attend drama school is moving, but it sits alongside a contemporary reality in which youth pipelines are collapsing, specialist training is underfunded, and access routes for working‑class and minority artists have narrowed. Acosta speaks of ballet’s salvation, but the book does not acknowledge the systemic fragility of grassroots dance, community studios, or regional touring. The essays celebrate the idea of public investment while avoiding the evidence of how ACE has distributed it.
Serota’s forward‑looking section repeats familiar themes: long‑term planning, sustained investment, talent development, creativity across the curriculum. These are correct — but they are the same arguments made by Jennie Lee in 1965, Ken Robinson in 1999, and Margaret Hodge in 2025. The book does not confront why these goals have not been delivered. It does not acknowledge ACE’s strategic failures, the absence of artform policy, or the systemic inequities documented by the PLACE Report, National Audit Office, Public Accounts Committee and the Hodge Review.
The book’s rhetorical commitment to “excellence, everywhere, for everyone” mirrors ACE’s Strategic Framework 2026, which confuses goals with objectives and avoids trade‑offs. It celebrates aspiration without providing mechanisms. It praises public investment without addressing its uneven distribution. It highlights cultural value without confronting structural inequality. It is a narrative of continuity at a moment when continuity is precisely the problem.
In this sense, Made in England is not a reckoning; it is reassurance. It is a commemorative publication designed to stabilise ACE’s legitimacy, foreground emotional testimony, and frame public investment as an unbroken success story. It is a book about what ACE wants to be seen as, not about what ACE is. It is a book about the past ACE celebrates, not about the future England needs.
And this is precisely why the New Deal for the Arts and Grassroots Music is necessary. The book’s omissions — structural inequity, art form imbalance, regional disparity, the collapse of local infrastructure, the fragility of grassroots venues, the absence of art form policy — reinforce the central argument of my forthcoming report: that England requires a new architecture capable of delivering cultural democracy, not another iteration of institutional self‑mythology.
Made in England celebrates 80 years of public investment. The New Deal asks what the next 80 years must deliver — and builds the structure to make it possible.
3 “Excellence. For Everybody. Everywhere.” Darren Henley’s contribution to Made in England.
Darren Heleys chapter “Excellence. For Everybody. Everywhere.” in Made in England needs to be placed in context. In Let’s Create the Arts Council came up with the the investment principle “Ambition and Quality” (Let’s Create page 47). It is as if the Arts Councils previous strategy, “Great Art and Culture for Everyone”, 2010-2020 had not existed. Goal 1 was “Talent and artistic excellence are thriving and celebrated”. One would have thought that in 10 years the Arts Council would have formulated the notion of what determines artistic excellence and by implication quality and ensured that its funded organisations were turning out work of the highest quality. This appears not to be the case as Let’s Create states:
“Judgements about quality are inevitable complex and open to debate. We will therefore continue to work with the cultural sector to establish a shared language around it, which we will draw on as we consider and explain our investment decisions. But in the end it will be the Arts Councils responsibility to use our experience and expertise to make the judgements that determine these decisions”.(Let’s Create p 47)
The authors report on Let’s Create can be read here
After 10 years of “Great Art and Culture for Everyone the Arts Council has yet to nail the question of what constitutes high quality or quality period, and Arts Council England is going to spend another 10 years working with the cultural sector to establish a shared language that will define quality. The reality is that you end up with a “bunch of bureaucrats sitting in a room on their own” and developing a “shared language” that will end up as a lingua franca of the cultural establishment with little or no resonance with audiences, artists or arts consumers
With that in mind onto Darren Heley’s chapter “Excellence. For Everybody. Everywhere.” Darren Henley’s contribution to Made in England is a polished, confident and rhetorically generous defence of Arts Council England’s mission. It is written with fluency and conviction, and it presents ACE as a benevolent steward of national creativity — an organisation that champions excellence, nurtures talent, and brings culture to “everybody, everywhere.” But beneath the warmth of the prose lies a familiar pattern: a narrative of aspiration that avoids structural truth, a celebration of ACE’s successes that omits its failures, and a vision of cultural democracy that is not matched by the organisation’s own behaviour.
Henley begins by asserting that public investment “pays big dividends,” and that excellence is the foundation of popular, resonant art. This is unobjectionable — but it is also strategically convenient. By framing excellence as universal and self‑evident, Henley sidesteps the central question my forthcoming report raises: who defines excellence, who benefits from it, and which art forms ACE consistently treats as excellent? His essay never acknowledges the hierarchy of culture embedded in ACE’s decisions since 1946, nor the structural bias that has privileged opera and classical institutions over jazz, popular, world, folk, grassroots and multi‑genre musics.
The essay’s most striking feature is its selective geography. Henley offers a tour of England’s cultural landscape — Chester, Prescot, Plymouth, Nottingham, Bristol, Burnley, Barnsley, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham — and presents these visits as evidence of ACE’s reach and equity. But this is anecdotal geography, not structural geography. It does not confront the PLACE Report data, the National Audit Office findings, or the Hodge Review’s evidence of regional inequity. It does not acknowledge the collapse of local authority funding, the fragility of grassroots venues, or the absence of artform‑specific policy. It is a narrative of travel, not a narrative of distribution.
Henley’s extended celebration of opera is particularly revealing. He describes productions by Opera North, English National Opera, OperaUpClose, Pegasus Opera Company and Birmingham Opera Company with enthusiasm and detail. This is genuine passion — but it also mirrors ACE’s structural behaviour. The author’s FOI evidence shows that ACE acted decisively and strategically to create the UK Opera Association, convening NPOs, commissioning analysis and awarding a direct grant. Henley’s essay reinforces opera’s centrality while claiming that ACE “has no time for the argument that one art form is intrinsically more valuable than another.” The rhetoric denies hierarchy; the examples confirm it.
Henley’s argument that ACE is an “And… And” organisation — supporting opera and grassroots venues, major institutions and community projects — is rhetorically elegant but strategically hollow.
The Hodge Review shows that ACE’s processes are “inappropriately long, complicated, bureaucratic — and expensive,” that excellence has been “sidelined,” and that ACE has failed to defend the arm’s‑length principle. Henley’s essay does not acknowledge these failures. Instead, it presents ACE as a perfectly balanced steward of all artforms, all geographies and all communities. This is not analysis; it is aspiration.
The essay’s discussion of diversity and inclusion is heartfelt, but again selective. Henley writes that “talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not,” and emphasises the need to break down barriers. Yet he does not address the structural drivers of inequality identified in the Deaton Review, nor the collapse of youth pipelines, nor the fragility of music education, nor the absence of artform policy that would enable equitable investment. Diversity is framed as an opportunity, not as a structural obligation.
Henley’s reflections on education are similarly aspirational. He argues for creativity across the curriculum and celebrates programmes such as Firstsite’s Holiday Fun, the RSC’s schools work, and the National Literacy Trust’s Connecting Stories. These are valuable initiatives — but they do not address the systemic failures documented in the 2025 Curriculum Review, nor the widening gap between what schools are expected to deliver and what ACE funds. Henley’s essay celebrates examples; it avoids systems.
The essay’s closing argument — that ACE must invest in “brilliant artists… across all art forms, at all scales, for all audiences in all places” — is rhetorically powerful but strategically impossible within ACE’s current architecture. It is precisely the kind of universalist framing that my forthcoming report – a New Deal for Arts and Music – shows ACE cannot deliver cultural democracy. Without artform policy, without structural reform, without additionality, without regional equity, without a grassroots‑first funding body, ACE cannot do what Henley claims it is doing.
In this sense, Henley’s essay is not simply a contribution to an anniversary book. It is a defence of ACE’s institutional identity at a moment when that identity is under challenge. It is a narrative of continuity, not a recognition of the need for change. It is a celebration of ACE’s intentions, not an examination of its outcomes. It is a story of what ACE wants to be seen as, not of what ACE is.
And this is precisely why my forthcoming paper the New Deal for the Arts and Music is necessary. Henley’s essay demonstrates the limits of ACE’s worldview: its reliance on anecdote, its avoidance of structural analysis, its rhetorical universalism, its selective geography, its implicit hierarchy, and its inability to confront the systemic failures documented across in my forthcoming report. The New Deal provides what Henley’s essay cannot: structural clarity, artform equity, measurable objectives, economic realism, and a funding architecture capable of delivering cultural democracy.
Henley’s essay celebrates 80 years of public investment. My New Deal for Arts and Music asks what the next 80 years must deliver — and builds the structure to make it possible.
Chris Hodgkins
10th July 2026
