Culture: who pays?

Listen to the debate from the Battle of Ideas Festival 2018.

Last month, the National Gallery dropped a grant of £1million from the Sackler family over a controversy involving the US pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma LP that the Sacklers own and which makes the highly-addictive opioid prescription painkiller OxyContin. This is only the latest controversy involving arts sponsorship.

This debate, produced in partnership with Camelot, asks what the role of culture is in today’s Britain. Who should fund it? Is culture itself is a luxury or a necessity in a modern-day society?

ALEXANDER ADAMS
artist, writer and art critic; author, Culture War: art, identity politics and cultural entryism (forthcoming)

DR TIFFANY JENKINS
writer and broadcaster; author, Keeping Their Marbles: how treasures of the past ended up in museums and why they should stay there

BARB JUNGR
award-winning singer, songwriter, composer and writer

SEAN GREGORY
director of learning & engagement, Barbican Centre and Guildhall School of Music & Drama

CHAIR: CLAIRE FOX
director, Academy of Ideas

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