The government is trying to destroy the arts – we must not let them win

The idea of restricting the ambitions of young people is beyond depressing, writes Jenny Eclair

Bob Mortimer alongside Paul Whitehouse in ‘Gone Fishing’: Mortimer got the last laugh after abandoning his law career for the arts (BBC)

The government seemingly isn’t getting university loans back from arts graduates as quickly or as efficiently as they would like.

Therefore, in their tiny little pig-headed, mealy-mouthed, Ebenezer Scrooge-like minds, they have apparently decided the answer is to cut down the number of young people who can do these “lower earning” degrees.

There is such joyless spite about this kind of mentality: how do you end up being the type of person who thinks like this? Answer, possibly by being the type of person who didn’t do an arts degree.

Let me state right now that I haven’t even got a degree – I think I got an accredited drama school diploma, but considering I flunked out of my last term with an eating disorder, I’m not too sure.

I was at Manchester Polytechnic in the late Seventies. Tuition was free, and since then – if you check my tax returns – I think you’ll find I’ve paid some hefty contributions.

The idea of restricting the ambitions of young people is beyond depressing. It’s such a wing-clipping notion; and to reduce tertiary education down to some dreary number-crunching exercise surely defeats the object of the exercise. Isn’t the whole point in studying for a degree to expand your horizons – not to limit them?

I have always felt incredibly sorry for people who tell me that when they were younger they were desperate to go to art school or drama school, but their parents wouldn’t let them. I have never really understood this: what do you mean, your parents wouldn’t let you?

But then, I’m lucky – I’m a white, middle class woman born of fairly liberal parents. I mean, let’s not go mad, it wasn’t one of those households where I was allowed to hang around the house all day smoking dope and sleeping with a different boy every night; but my parents were very casual about what I wanted to do, as long as I stayed at school long enough to take some A-levels.

If I got into a drama school after that, it was cool by them. Possibly they were relaxed about this intention due to having two other children who showed zero showbiz leanings and could be relied upon to enter less precarious professions (both my siblings became barristers, as it happens).

At a time when the arts are doing everything they can to be more open to underprivileged and underrepresented communities, it’s horrific to see the government try to turn the clock back. Because – of course – the people who won’t be encouraged onto arts degree courses are precisely those whose voices need to be heard.

Ten years ago I did panto in fabulously posh Richmond; and when I questioned the overwhelming whiteness of the company’s dance school kids, it was suggested to me that the local middle class Bame families tended not to encourage their children to participate in anything that might distract them from their studies. After all, their futures lay in law and medicine.

Whether this was entirely true or not, I found the theory heartbreaking; we are talking about primary school children. More than a decade on, I really thought things had changed – the arts, as we know, are for everybody.

But now the government wants to take on the role of the disapproving “no child of mine” Victorian father, and a generation of wannabe youngsters could be on the verge of being talked out of “chancing it”.

From what I can gather, the proposed plans mean arts courses will become an elite option, in which case, bang goes all the hard work that’s been done to expand inclusivity in recent years.

All this is about the treasury getting its knickers in a twist about the amount of student loans that is still owed.

Do you know what I’d be getting my knickers in a twist over if I were a student right now? The disgraceful way they are being treated and the costs they are incurring for courses, mostly being taught online.

What constitutes a good degree anyway? At the moment, I am listening to Bob Mortimer’s wonderful biography And Away..., in which Bob – a socially introverted working class boy from Middlesbrough – sets out to do everyone proud by embarking on a sensible law degree at Sussex university, followed by another in Leicester, before eventually qualifying as a solicitor for Southwark Council.

On paper, this is surely a government success story, the boy done good. However, in the book this period of his life reeks of unhappiness and frustration, and when his career peaks – dealing with cases of cockroach infestations – you can almost taste the despair.

Life is strange: you can do the “right thing” and jump through the hoops that your background and society impress upon you, but you can be reborn into a new life and career for the price of a pint and a chance meeting with a like-minded bloke in a pub in New Cross.

Some people may have been horrified by Bob’s career conversion – but who’s having the last laugh now?