In our ongoing exploration of sectoral communications, Brittany Golob looks at how Britain’s arts and culture industry is faring, and the reputational challenges it faces

Art, as they say, is life. But pinning down precisely what the arts and culture industry in the United Kingdom has come to encompass remains difficult. The country of Shakespeare and James Bond, of Turner and the Beatles, of the Tate Modern and the V&A, has an arts sector which is a patchwork of film, theatre, fine and performance arts, museums and festivals, history and culture.

In looking at the reputation of this diverse industry, we’ll examine three cases: the UK film industry, Liverpool’s year as the European Capital of Culture in 2008 and the state of arts institutions with powers to govern and endow.

The British film industry

“Reputation is everything,” Katie McNeill, the vice president of production at Electric City Films says. “That’s how you get to make bigger movies, because you’ve proven you can on a smaller scale.” McNeill works with a pair of Hollywood producers responsible for recent arthouse successes Blue Valentine and Half-Nelson, among others. Her take on reputation in the film industry focuses on content. It is the reputation of the films Electric City produces that attract new talent and attract distributors to ensure its films are seen. A good reputation, she says, is what her company has achieved when its filmmakers can draw in up-andcoming actors to help promote a small company’s work on an independent film. Doing business this way is akin to a B2B outlook. The production company’s work promotes its reputation to an audience within the industry.

The British film industry, as Jonathan Olsberg, who runs a prominent film consultancy, points out, is fostered in part by public financing and support from national broadcasters. “The UK has a lot of structures and different ways of supporting its film industry,” he says. “Historically this has mostly been from a cultural perspective. The government wants British culture to be seen around the world and the film industry is a way to do it.”

On the marketing end, a film industry or company is no different from other businesses working to increase brand awareness. But film has one thing going for it, the potential for widespread viewing and powerful imagery. A film industry in, say, Mauritius, where Olsberg’s consultancy is currently working, must participate in trade shows, encourage production teams to travel to the country and potentially offer rebates for filming on location. A small film company, similarly, must push its films into festivals, spread the word via social media and hope that the talent involved in the picture can draw in an audience.

A report carried out by Olsberg on sustainable business practice in the film industry says, “Feature films contribute to a wider ‘branding’ of a country’s inhabitants, society and culture. This can have a very strong influence on creating a desire to engage in business transactions as well as tourism visits.” The relationship between film and the branding potential of the production company’s country or the location of the film has been a huge boon to British filmmaking and to British tourism. By branding a country in a certain way through its film output, the reputation of the film company involved or the film industry of the country benefits.

The film industry, on the surface, can run its marketing and branding machines in much the same way as any other business. However, there are idiosyncrasies that set the industry apart from its cousins in other sectors.

Reputation, for a film company or a national film industry, is not built or broken on the back of one film. “Because films take a long time to get made, it wouldn’t be unusual for a country to lie fallow for a couple of years. There’s an ebb and flow in both the supply and consumption of films,” says Olsberg.

The long timescale between the release of films also affects reputation and brand for film-makers. “That’s the thing that we have always questioned,” McNeill says. “Whether fans and moviegoers are going to associate a type of movie with a production company or just have an emotional investment with the movie individually. It’s often hard for us to promote Electric City because it’s harder to get followers to a company. It’s easier to follow a movie or a director.” Reputation, she says, is built around individuals and individual films.

International film festivals help. So does social media. “Mostly you’re just relying on building an audience or some buzz on Facebook or Twitter” McNeill says, acknowledging the fact that it takes time for an independent film company to build a reputation outside the industry itself. Reputation is spread by word of mouth, audience by audience, Twitter follower by Twitter follower.

Liverpudlian culture

In 2008, an underdog became the 23rd European Capital of Culture (ECoC) – the EU’s biggest cultural festival. Liverpool’s nomination and selection were based on its potential to emerge as a leader in European cultural landscape. The festival itself was an astronomical success for organisers, but the question remains whether or not the intention to fundamentally Merseyside’s reputation has been realised in the five years since.

Claire McColgan, city culture director, says that the ambition of 2008 didn’t stop with the year’s end. “It still threads through the city. Liverpool has to have a competitive edge in order to survive. We can’t forget the Beatles and Anfield, they’ve been hugely important to the city and UK tourism economy, but what I hope has happened is that we’ve built up a wider offer.”

Reputation must be considered as an aggregate of many factors. In 2008, Merseyside’s cultural attractions recorded a 50% increase in visitors, tourists spent £753.8 million and positive media coverage increased by 71%. Stakeholders were thrilled and the city was deemed to have undergone a renaissance.

Five years on, that renaissance still resonates. Joe Anderson, mayor of Liverpool, says: “Liverpool City Centre matters. It is the engine of economic growth in the city region... But it would be premature to say that we have done all we need to do to restore Liverpool to its rightful place as one of Europe’s great cities.” Urban development has spurred regeneration of the Victorian buildings. Distinct neighbourhoods have been designated, including the waterfront area and a dynamic arts community. The mayor’s 15-year plan for development is now moving past infrastructure and into improving Liverpool’s economic livelihood.

A huge amount of investment has gone into Liverpool’s renaissance, largely on the back of the 2008. “What it did was focus the city on a finishing point for a lot of regeneration...It pushed the city in a really interesting direction but hasn’t lost any of its cultural offering,” McColgan says. The cultural offerings of the city have become the second-most remarked upon topics in the media, after football, marking a significant change for a metropolis once lambasted for its safety issues and urban decline.

A significant reputational driver in Liverpool is higher education. The Knowledge Quarter brings in £1 billion p.a. or 15% of Liverpool’s total GVA. Students at the University of Liverpool in 2008 were polled as to the motivations behind their decision to attend; it was found that reputation is one of the key decision-making factors behind the university application process. “When choosing a university I knew that Liverpool was about to be the Capital of Culture,” a student said.

Five years on, 90% of visitors to the city centre perceive it very highly. The media has also changed tack and reported less on crime and urban decay and more on development and culture since 2008.

Other ECoC cities tend to see similar regeneration, as Glasgow did after 1990, but Liverpool may be one of the biggest success stories for the EU programme. After 2008, 51% of those involved in the arts and culture sector said Liverpool had repositioned itself as a world class city. Nationwide polling reveals a 5% increase in the amount of people who perceive Liverpool positively after 2008. Liverpool’s success during 2008 also prompted Gordon Brown to launch the British Capital of Culture programme to encourage urban regeneration and culture outside of London. Liverpool stands today as an example of the power culture can have on the reputation of a city.

Arts organisations

While arts and culture in Britain are driven by festivals, films and fine arts, the sector is governed by a mainstay of national and independent organisations that are national standard-b earers.

Organisations like the Royal Academy for the Arts have centuries of experience in arts cultivation and funding. The Arts Council, on the other hand, is just 18 years old but has swiftly become the main national endowment for the arts.

Mags Patten, executive director of communications at the Arts Council, points out that it’s the single largest funder of arts and culture in the UK. “Our Royal Charter emphasises two core principles that we use to direct our actions: to support excellence and to ensure that that excellent work reaches as many people across the country as possible. We believe that our reputation stems from this, with more people valuing arts and culture in England and with almost 80% of adults now engaging in the arts.”

Arts and culture also has an economic impact. This is prevalent in the film industry: a recent report showed that 92% of Odeon customers wanted to see more British films released every year. Independent films made up nearly 13% of all British films in 2011, a record high nearly doubling the 2010 output. The report says, “Film also makes a significant contribution to the richness and variety of cultural life in the UK.” The film industry brings in £4.7 billion to the British economy each year.

Beyond the film industry, visitors to arts attractions have a multiplier effect on the economy, as they spend money in local areas. Prominent cultural displays in Britain, according to the DCMS, “leads to greater benefit to the UK from a flourishing community of artists with global recognition and enhances the UK’s position as a centre of the global art world.” What could be better for the industry’s reputation than that?