הכנסת השלוש עשית

מושב רביעי



נוסח לא מתוקן



פרוטוקול מס' 229

מישיבת ועדת החינוך והתרבות

שהתקיימה ביום ג' , ו' בחשון תשנ"ה, 11.10.1994 בשעה 10:45

נפחו;

היו"ר א. בורג

י. בא-גד

ש. יהלום

השרה ש. אלוני, שרת התקשורת והאמנויות

ג. הנסן, מנכ"ל המועצה הבריטית

ס. כהן

א. ברנע

ד. סורק

ר. זימרו

ש. ויסוסקי

נ. כהן

ע. שרון

ז. רודן, תזמורת סמפונית ירושלים

ב. ים

א. יבניאלי

ד. רול

ד. מירפין

ג. בונה

ש. ששון

צ. פינס

ש. גנד

ד. רודלף

י. בן-ארי

נ. טל

י. אלוני

ר. אמיתי, תיאטרון ילדים

ו. בן-נעים

ר. אמטלם



ש. וייץ

א. אייל

פ. סנדיפורד

מ. פישר

צ. פלד

ו. דאוד

א. ברן

ט. סאבש

ד. חרמש

י. מורד

ר. יעקובי

י. ורד

י. פרוסט

צ. שוחט

מ. ואל

ב. ילין

ש. בן משח

ד. טיני

ג. טרסקי

י. גידלי

חבר חמתרגמיס בע"מ

הרצאת אורח; מבנה מוסדות התרבות בבריטניה



בוקר טוב. ברוכים הבאים. זאת ישיבת יוצאת דופן A. Burg;

משום שהדופן שלנו הוא ההוזיה הישראלית, על הפעם

התרבות שלה על החקיקה שלה או השלכות החינוך שלה מנקודת מבט. אנחנו באים

חיצונית, שהיא בעלת משמעות גדולה מאוד לתהליך שהוועדה נמצאת אנחנו

בעיצומו וזה חקיקה של חוק תרבות.בודקים את האפשרות של הקמת רשות

עצמאית. יש לנו אורת, מנכ"ל המועצה הבריטית, שיתן לנו את נקודת המבט,

מנסיון רב שנים של בריטניה הגדולה בנושא מבנה מוסדות התרבות.

Dear guests, this is an exceptional occasion for us not only because

of the language barrier that usually divides us but because usually,

our daily jobs and tasks of the committee are focused on the Israeli

issues both on the cultural and the education side and we enjoy our

problems so much that we hardly have any time to look outside or to

have any outside point of view to tell us look, there is a different

opinion, look, there is an experience in some other place around the

universe, around the globe. For this matter, you, our guests from

the Embassy side which we take as part of the Israeli experience and

Mr. Hensen, we take as part of the guests experience, we are

actually eager to hear both your experience and your comments about

the British structure, the structural and other side of the arts

because this committee is now in the midst of the process of

legislation which if, so help us G-d and a couple of hands raised

during the process voting for this legislation, we will have in

Israel something which is very new to our arts committee and the

horizon of the art business in Israel or the art structure of Israel

and this is something close to your art council within Great

Britain. Therefore, your comments and your observations both on the

internal structure and the external affairs of the British Council,

is very important to us especially at this point of time of the

daily course of this committee.

So you are mostly wel come both as guests and as professionals to

this committee and I really want to thank to Yossi Frost who didn't

save any effort to make this meeting possible and the Minister Shula

Aloni who became, I can't say the father of arts in Israel but at

least I can say the mother of arts in Israel. For many years, we

didn't have somebody in the cabinet, highest level, who really takes

art as an important matter. It is not just a marginal or a unit

within a ministry. It is a main, an important issue of the

Minister. I can say what Minister Aloni is doing to the arts in

Israel and the fact that she tries and in many cases even succeeds

to elaborate more points of view than the immediate Israeli one.

Like your visit here, like the initiative to bring you here to this

committee and unable us and the community around us to understand

what's going on. It is part of the new approach which is so

important and so essential to the development of arts in Israel.

Thank you very much.



S, Aloni! Thank you, Mr. Chairperson. If you would

ll'allow me only a few words in Hebrew and I

come back to you.

אנחנו הללנו וראלנו את המבנה בברלטנלה. בקשתל ואנל הושבת שזו נקודה

מאוד השובה, אל התלות של האמנולות, גם בלהסלם בלן המדלנה ההוצה,

ואנהנו מרחלבלם את הקשת שלנו ,וגם בתוך המדלנה. לא רק שלש גוף אהד שזה

הART couNClL-אלא גם החלוקה למהוזות השונלם.

את הדלאלוג המתמלד שבין השמח המרכז ובלן היוצרלם לבלן ספקל

האמצעלם ולמרות שהאורח שלנו הוא עובד בלהוד עם British Councilשהוא

ה- בלחסלם שבלן האמנות והמדע החוצה, ובקשרלם בלנלאומללם, הוא בקלא

גדול בכל המערכת וחשוב לנו להתללחם ללחסלם האלה. אנחנו רוצלם ללמוד.

Thank you very much for coming. I would appreciate very much if

you'll emphasize three points. One, what the British Council is

doing, regrading relations between Great Britain and the whole

world. The second thing or maybe the first, how the Art Council is

working, the connection with the arts, with the heritage the Council

and the' Government on the one hand, and the Council and different

districts in the country on the other hand. If they are autonomous,

how can they bri ng their initiative, how much they can do to

initiate themselves and who makes the decisions. The less the

government interferes with what they do and the more money they

give, the better.

J. Hensen; Thank you. Good morning everybody.

Chairperson and Minister, thanks for the

invitation to come and meet you. It is a big honor to have the

chance to speak to people who I think are in fact very well briefed

on the position in my country as well as obviously the current

issues here in Israel.

I was told that there was going to be a lively debate so I think

when we get to that part of the meeting, very much I look forward to

.questions and comments

The British Council which is my own personal experience, of course,

deals with external cultural relations and I'd like to range over

those issues which the Minister has laid out, then perhaps we can go

into discussion.

Quite honestly. I find it a touch daunting in a country like Israel

which I think amongst nations is really the paradigm for strength of

self-identity and I think distinctiveness of its own national

culture. When in fact at first sight in my own country, the

situation is very much less so.

The words British culture, it's always seemed to me largely in

Britain, meaningless for the majority of its inhabitants. It is not

really a term of art and it is not really a phrase that you would





find in common use in Britain except when you talk about cultural

relations and meetings like this.

I'm not saying that there isn't a vibrant cultural life. Yes, there

is. It exists in great depth but we do shy away from identifying

ourselves with reference to art culture and using those words. I

suspect that is because we've not actually had the issue of having

to identify ourselves for several hundred years and it is rather

interesting the talk about national culture in Britain is reviving

around the issues of Scottish identity and Welsh identity. The

English don't seek for identity. They know that English is what's

left after you take away from the concept of Britain, Scotland,

Wales and Northern Ireland. So we don't have that problem.

It seems to me that this is very unlike the situation, for example,

in France where French culture is a very clear concept, a very

popular concept. Culture in France is placed right at the top and

identified as such on their national agenda. It is one of the

attributes of France and it commands great prestige. If you are a

diplomat then you exhibit it to the world in the conduct of your

diplomacy.

National attitudes to cultures obviously reveal a great deal about

how we value things, what we think and perhaps even how we are

likely to behave. You can apparently in France win local municipal

elections on the strength of your local cultural policy and I

believe you can do that in Italy and possibly in Spain. You

couldn't actually do that in Britain and yet it is true that through

the local authority structure, at least as much is spent on cultural

activity as is spent from the center through the national central

structures.

I think similarly you can tell quite a lot from how countries choose

to promote their culture overseas and how they choose to present it

overseas. I have great respect for the French model which seems to

me to be a brilliant triumph of French cultural diplomacy. It is.

as we would say, very product oriented. It is high prestige. It is

a national effort which I think is obviously renowned and successful

in the world. It is centrist and it Is directed by the government.

In Britain, I think from factors to do with our national character,

the situation Isn't at all like that. If you want to admire

somebody in Britain, you will call civilized perhaps rather than

cultured. Cultured Is an epithet which Is easier applied to pearls.

The British people tend to define themselves, I think, more by their

institutions, by reference to their Parliament which they are very

fond of and that to call the Mother of Parliaments which is perhaps

true, perhaps not. They tend to Identify themselves by talking

about their democratic processes, by talking about the freedoms

which they do expect to have around them. And they see the 20th



century as having delivered on all these things for them. So, most

find their identity in that kind of language. They don't identify

themselves by reference to "British culture." And yet, if you go as

many of you do to London, to Manchester, to Birmingham, to Glasgow,

to Edinborough, there you will find a very rich cultural life.

A cultural life which is also actually used by the people. The

proportion of the cost of box office tickets at concerts and the

theater in Britain is paid by the public and not by national

subsidy, I think is the highest in Europe. So people do value their

culture but maybe they don't conceptualize it.

The situation in Germany perhaps is different again, it seems to me.

Germany seems to me to be the country above all in Europe which

defines itself by its culture more than any other European nation.

In the city of Berlin, for example, public investment in cultural

institutions and activity is actually higher than the sum total of

national investment in cultural institutions in the whole of Britain

and yet, there are in London more orchestras, more theater companies

than there are in Berlin. So we have something of a paradox there.

For Germany perhaps the 20th century has reinforced the self

perception that their identity is best found in their national

culture and rather than in institutions to do with civic society

which have certainly in the first part of the 20th century not been

reached up to perhaps their national expectations.

Their identity projected today overseas is very much a cultural

identity. You may know here in Israel, as I know in many countries

overseas, as Allies and sometimes in this business competitors, the

Gerta Institute and DAAD, their university, higher education linking

organization, both of whom seem to me to be highly respected, highly

successful and set up and run independently of government although

they receive substantial government funding.

Then we'll move i nto my own case. The British Council was created

sixty years ago. It is our anniversary. It was created to make

Britain and to make the British way of life, and I use this phrase

"the British way of life" because this is the natural phrase in my

language to use rather than "British culture", to make the British

way of life better known overseas. It was created as an independent

.1934organization. That happened quite naturally without debate in

It was exactly what you did in line with the common British practice

and concept that we now call the arms length principle. I don't

think anybody called it a principle in those days at all. They just

did it like that. The government in a sense should be wise enough

to create space between itself and institutions and activities of a

certain kind and that in a sense, government should voluntarily

strengthen its hand. That's a voluntary choice of the government to

make.



You see it occurring, this principle of distance at arms length, the

arms length principle, you see it occurring obviously in

broadcasting, in the role, in the way in which the BBC operates

which is publicly funded through the license fee, very definitely

operates independently of government.

You see it also in Britain in education. Our teachers. for example,

are not civil servants. They are seen as different from the

servants of the state. Our inspector of education does not report

to the Ministry of Education. The inspector of education reports to

Parliament which is seen as different again from the government of

the day and the traditional independence of our universities is

another kind of example.

This is true also of the arts councils and there are now four in

Britain responsible from government for the delivery of, dividing

the funding for, providing the environment for the development of

the arts in Britain. They all have royal charters. They are

charities. Their staff is seen as public servants but again, they

don't see themselves and they are not civil servants. But the art

councils have from government national role and I'll come back to

that.

Let me read to you, as an interesting text, a statement which the

Secretary of State for National Heritage, that was then Peter Brook

made in Parliament in July of last year. It is quite interesting as

an indication of how ministers see the art councils in the U.K.

This is what the statement says. He said to Parliament: I see the

primary role of ministers as setting the councils' legal, financial

and institutional framework, including appointments to the council

and the structure of arts funding and management. Within this

framework, the role of the council, that is the Arts Council of

England, but the same applies to the other art councils, the role of

the council is to steer the general direction of artistic policy and

decide the allocation of funding in line with the exercise of

artistic judgment. It is not for the government to seek to

intervene in matters of artistic judgment. Although, he said,

giving himself a way out, there can be occasions when ministers can

properly act as a conduit for public and political opinion. So he

can get into questions of artistic judgment under the pressure of

.popular appeal

On the external side in cultural relations, the British Council like

the art councils in Britain operates under a royal charter. That's

its status. It is a royal chartered institution. If you have

royal charter as opposed to a charter, in Britain that means the

government is according you prestige. It is meant to indicate

importance and prestige in national life. That sounds very pompous

but it is a way of distinguishing certain sorts of institutions.



British Council too is a charity. It has an independent chairman

and board. The Foreign Minister has to approve the appointment of

the chairman and of the director general, that's myself, but he

isn't allowed to nominate. He is allowed owed to agree or not to agree

to nominations put to him from the chairman of the board of the

.British Council

In the case of the director general, the director general is always

appointed after an open competition which is advertised in the

national press which anybody can apply to for the job. That

incidentally was not true of the last appointment of the director

general of the BBC. That is a parochial point which I make to my

personal satisfaction.

Very interesting turning to ministerial status again and I'd like to

do a small piece of textual analysis with you. If I could read out

another statement. This from the present Secretary of State of

Foreign Affairs, Douglas Herd, Foreign Secretary which he made in

January of this year publicly when he made a speech to the Foreign

Press Association. He was talking about Britain in the world and

how Britain wished to relate in the world to other countries. In

that speech what he did was to renew that principle as well , in this

case, he didn't call it " arms length principle". He called it

"editorial independence". He was referring to the two main bodies

active in this field in Britain. One, the British Council, the

other is the World Service of the BBC.

"Our culture broadly defined encompasses the values which

we encourage others to follow." Right. This is a sense, you will

detect of political mission in that. "Cultural diplomacy," said Mr.

Herd, "in parallel with the work done by many individuals and

organizations is important in creating the perceptions others have

of us." Another political mission statement that about influence.

"So there is a role for government in employing British culture."

He did use the phrase. British culture is a resource which you use

in foreign relations. "Though it has to be carefully targeted,"

That means the Treasury is looking over my shoulder and wishes to

know exactly what it achieves and how you measure you. So it has

got to be highly selective and focused.

In his second paragraph he said: "In the case of the BBC and the

British Council, both what they do and how they do," and that's a

very important phrase for us and the BBC "and how they do it are

important. Everyone knows that though government funded, they're

organizations which set their own standards and manage their own

programs. Editorial independence," and I underline, he didn't "is

central to their effectiveness and is a mark of the government's

confidence in them."



So with that in effect, a parallel statement on the external

relations side which makes actually some of the points but rather

differently than Mr. Brook made in Parliament about the Arts Council

of England.

That last statement happened in 1994 but let me take you back to

1934 so that we can be clear about what the agenda was and to be

frank, what the agenda indeed is now because there are a number of

propositions here and I feel actually comfortable with them. If you

don't, I'd be very interested in discussing to know how you respond

to them.

The first proposition in 1934 was that British political and

commercial interests were suffering. They were suffering because we

were seen so ourselves as in competition in the thirties with

Germany and Italy in the world, political competition and of course,

the events that you know that followed. And were suffering in the

view of ambassadors overseas and therefore eventually the Foreign

Ministry at home for the lack of a voice of Britain abroad. To do

what? I suppose to register our values, to say what we stood for,

to draw attention to Britain and to, as it were, make it plain that

we saw ourselves in the thirties as an engaged player in the world.

.1934So that was the first proposition that was being made in

The second was that this kind of role should be at arms length.

That's the way that we did things around there and we still do them

around here in that way now. It is the thought that, the

proposition that doing it in that way speaks in some way for the

society that is being represented and that is a very powerful

current underlying thread in the way that Britain does this.

A third proposition which I don't think was there in 1934 but is

here in 1994 that the job will be done more effectively, that an

organization with that kind of disposition should be more credible

that it will act not simply as a mouthpiece of government but that

in some sense, it will be more broadly based in the whole range of

British educational and arts and science and intellectual

institutions and that has always been our style from the 1930s. I

don't think we actually realize until we've been at this business

for twenty or thirty years that there was a particular point in

doing it in that way.

What the government was doing was investing the taxpayers' money

quite deliberately to secure as it saw benefits for Britain but it

saw those benefits as being available only if that transaction was

placed at distance from the political pressures of the day and it

had to be meaningful in the terms of the content of what was being

done. It had to be serious. So I find myself running a

non-political organization. I don't believe that. The context in

which my organization runs is highly political. The decision to



establish it is a political decision. The decision for it to be

there out in the world is a political decision. The decision for it

to be operating more in this country than that is a political

decision. But actually the way in which the Council does its work

and gets on, these issues are of no interest to my staff at all.

They are interested in the business of the Council, not. as it were,

the context in which we exist.

So we're created and funded in the heart of political life, but

operate right away from it. Having said that, I have to admit that

we have two politicians on our board but note, not one, two. One

from each of the two main political parties.

S. Aloni; Two out of how many?

.J. Hensen; You could say three now. The two are the

Labor Party and the Conservative Party and at

the time when the constitution was created, those were the two main

parties by very long chalk and the third party was miles away. It

still is in terms of parliamentary representation, miles away. I

don't know what it would be like after the next election but if we

move into a three party system, we will have to think about how we

operate.

S. Aloni; How many members do you have on the board?

There are about twenty five.

S. Aloni; So it is two or three out of twenty five.

A. Burg; Can you imagine our system? You know that we

Jews invented monopolies and we have G-d

represented in the Knesset by five parties.

J. Hensen; We'd need a bigger board. A non-political in

the way it acts organization. Let me make

two points. One, the Council is deliberately cast very broad. We

are concerned with the promotion of our arts overseas and

relationships in the arts but that is only one area in the broad

field of cultural relations for which we have responsibility.

Cultural relations for me and my staff is relations between cultures

in the broadest sense. So we are acted in the arts certainly, a

very large and important part of our work, but also in the sciences,

in law, in educational links, very strong in English language

teaching which is a particular facet of the way in which we're

involved internationally but we're also a development and aid agency

and we do a lot of work for our aid program, for the World Bank, the

European Union and at least half our activities is a developed

implementation agency. We do a lot of work with scholarships and



training. Scholarships we think are very important for the future

and future relationships.

Point two, the Council has got to be a profession and therefore a

specialized organization. Specialized means two things. It means

that you have to have first and foremost specialized, we believe,

advisory committees. This is how we try and place my organization

in the heart of cultural intellectual academic life in Britain

through its advisory committees who do have the best and most

respected advisers in their fields in the land and those committees

do a lot for us. They represent our constituencies with which and

for whom we work and it stops as being an ivory tower. They bring

, transparency. They also bring quality. If we believe that if we

are to be involved in this business then quality must be immaculate.

To do less is to under represent your country. Judgment has got to

be uncompromising in artistic and intellectual academic matters and

those advisory committees make sure that ours are.

And also, it is one of the ways in which you deliver your public

accountability because you are not behind closed doors. You are

open, involved with all the people for whom cultural relationships

mean life in Britain.

The second part of being professional, we believe, is in our staff.

You have to have professional staff who are respected in their own

fields and if I take as an example the arts area at work, our art

staff are involved with galleries, public and private. They

probably have a background working as art administrators or as

curators in other institutions and they may well develop their

careers there after they've worked in the Council. They are in

touch not simply with central arts authorities but with the media.

The BBC, remember, pays 300 million pounds a year for arts activity.

That includes six orchestras and that has nothing to do with our

arts councils and national heritage.

Our local authorities. We have art form departments which are run

and staff by professionals. On the visual arts side, as a matter of

policy, we contain and keep our own collection because we wish to be

lenders as well as borrowers. To do that, you've got to be able to

have and to show and demonstrate your professional competence in

creating. Otherwise, people won't lend to you and the best way to

be lent to is yourselves to have a collection from which to lend.

We concentrate on the contemporary scene. That is to say, we wish

to be involved in issues which are about Britain today. That is a

decision of policy. I don't mean that we are not involved in arts

exhibitions which are old masters and so forth. Yes, we are because

that is part of the overseas demand but for choice, we like to work

with contemporary artists and sculptures and creative people.



We are interested in long term relationships and therefore, although

we do cultural bombardment from time to time in things like

festivals and motor exhibitions and anniversaries and all the rest

of it, we are actually also interested in the long term position and

the relationships which grow from that. We are quite serious about

that and want it to happen. As a very broad generalization, I do

think that if we have any success at all, it's because we are seen

overseas, I hope we are, and you must tell me if we are not here, as

a long term organization in for the long haul and which acts

professionally and therefore is capable of winning trust. I believe

that we have to do that to be successful. I don't make a judgment

about how we are. Basically, I want people overseas to know that my

staff is still there the morning after the night before. When the

program, the project has gone through, they are still involved in

long term relationship.

We believe that we've got to be warts and all . We don't do

propaganda. We don't actually do massaging either. We, I think,

believe that people will form their own independent judgments of

what they find in their contacts with Britain. So in a sense, we're

resting our case on the institutions and the practices and the

people and the skills and the values of our society. We don't

message. We don't actually have any particular messages to deliver

to the world. We want to be involved.

To take an opposite example looking back in my experience over

thirty years mainly overseas, I think the exact antithesis of that

was cultural diplomacy as practiced by the East European states in

the Cold War era which I think was a waste of time and money and

didn't achieve anything. I think you can only genuinely be involved

in this business if you are determined to be honest about your own

society and you'll therefore be involved from time to time in

controversy. So I said yes to the Bolshoi but I wasn't actually

buying anything beyond the Bolshoi. I think even the Bolshoi in a

curiously sad way was a depressing comment on the unfree society

from which it came. I think if you are an unfree society, it is

silly to involve certain cultural relations. The conflicts are too

great.

Let me recount where I am. I've talked about the independence to me

these are really conditions which I think are important for our

success. They may not be relevant here. Independence,

professionalism, by which I mean being genuinely and seriously

involved in the fields which you are involved in, in a serious way.

The third element I think is for us, you've actually got to be out

there. You've got to be in other countries. You've got to be

involved in your own network overseas, of contact. The dialogue

begins overseas, if you're not just leading with some kind of notion

of your own country's excellence which I'm not sure we want to do



that. I think we wish to have staff working overseas who are

involved and engaged in the countries in which they live and work.

Most of our staff are overseas. We empl oy these days about six

thousand staff globally, of whom four and a half thousand are

overseas. Most of those are nationals of the country that we work

in.

A. Burg; So you are still an empire.

J. Hensen; We're a small empire. We are a commonwealth.

I'll find some other words for it in a

moment. I think we see in a sense the cultural interface overseas

as dictating how we wish to access resources in our own country. So

I place a lot of. emphasis on the involvement of your staff

overseas.

Can I quote the last Japanese Ambassador to Britain who just before

he left he made a speech and he said, and before I say it, I'm going

to say this was said non-cynical ly and I take it non-cynically but I

have to say that because I think you are going to laugh.

The Japanese Ambassador said that he thought that what the British

had as a peculiar national talent was an ability to perceive the

needs and wants of overseas societies and then to integrate that

kind of appraisal with a perception of their own national interest.

He didn't say that cynically and he said something which you can say

much easier that's a part of what we do and the way we try to be

involved and that is you've got to be involved in a process of

mutual benefit, otherwise you are going to be a cultural

propagandist and that's an absolutely essential feature of how we

want to work.

The overseas network is important. How it disposes itself is rather

pragmatic. In some countries, we work non-diplomatically and in our

own premises. In other countries, we work diplomatically and in our

own premises. In other countries, we work diplomatically and within

embassy premises. In all those cases, the role is the same. We are

acting as the principal organization for Britain's cultural

relations and tend to be the operators of cultural agreements and

cultural conventions. That's how it works. Basically I'm not

bothered how we are overseas. I'm interested in the content of what

goes on rather than the form of it. The form ought to be whatever

is the most convenient way of getting the business done.

Does that lead to conflicts with ambassadors, Andrew? I must ask

the British Ambassador at this point. I have to say occasionally

but on the whole not really because we talk to each other. We

discuss our own priorities. We discuss our own pressures. I

remember a British High Commissioner who will be known to the

British Ambassador here in India when I worked there, when we



discussed this issue because we were having a disagreement. He said

"I have the right to be consulted on anything which you

think is going to effect my general disposal of the diplomatic

relationship in India and you have the obligation to take that into

account." And then he said that "you have the right to decide."

"But if we don't do that, we are going to be no

better than party hacks." He was thinking of the way in which at

that time relationships were done by authoritarian countries in ways

which were a bit programmed and he was making a point that we were

suppose to do better than that and that that was a good way of

enshrining the principle.

So how do we square the circle with government? Well we consult.

We consult both in the field. We consult through the board which

has the permanent secretary of our Foreign Office on it. But when

he is on it, he is a trustee and therefore required by law to act in

the interest of the British Council and not the Foreign Office which

is a peculiar British twist. We act through regional consultations

with those who dispose foreign policy overseas. We also use

government funds so although we are independent, we have to receive

government funds for our core budgets and therefore, there is a

negotiation at foot.

Responsibility to the cabinet is through the Foreign Secretary, but

what's known in Britain as the Accounting Officer if things go wrong

and I will go to the Foreign Affairs committee or to the Public

Accounts Committee which occasionally happens.

So our responsibility to government for funding goes through the

Foreign Office but we also relate heavily operationally in very

close contact to other ministries too. One is the Department of

Trade and Industry. The other is to the Department for Education.

The other. of course, is the Department of National Heritage and the

Art Councils.

It is not always easy to discern what British Government priority Is

because there are so many organs and mouth pieces through which it

gets expressed.

Can you please emphasize more the system of

the art councils which is internal.

J. Hensen; Let me go straight on to that now. We're

involved because you need two hands to clap.

We can't be involved in cultural relations without being involved in

the art structures within the United Kingdom. Let's take the art

structure, at the center of it, there is central government. There

is the Department for National Heritage and it is the department

that sets a national legal institutional and funding framework.

They're in charge of the policy. They then choose to devolve It and



they devolve it in two different ways. They devolve allocations to

the Arts Council of England which in turn devolves it to ten

regional arts boards but also at national level from the cabinet is

an allocation of funds to the Scottish office and to the Welsh

office because we have elements of federalism in our system, in

Britain, of decentralization, devaluation of authorities, so the

Scottish Arts Council and the Welsh Arts Council and the Arts

Council of Northern Ireland draw their funding from their national

officers. not from the Department of National Heritage. That

actually give them far more independence of action than has the Arts

Council of England which is very close to the Department of National

Heritage.

We have to be quite clearly at every level in touch with those

structures. The arts councils, all four of them are autonomous and

their role is to foster the arts in the United .Kingdom, quite

differently from ours. They're there to promote the development of

the arts and our starting points are different. They need overseas

contacts for the health and growth and development of the arts in

Britain, not because they wish to involve themselves in, as it were,

the cultural part of foreign relations. We need their engagement

because we cannot be involved in cultural relations without the

institutions of Britain being motivated and deciding to use their

resources. So we have interests that coincide.

There are several ways in which we try to make them coincide. For a

start, we can't simply quartet them and export them. They have

their own aspirations. The Hal ley Orchestra has a long relationship

with South America and it wishes for its own institutional

development to go to South America. We have to know that. We have

to be sensitive to it. We have to respond to it. The London Arts

Board has special relationship which it is fostering between itself

and Montreal and Toronto and Madrid and Budapest and it sees this as

essential oxygenation for the development of the arts in the London

area. They want to meet their own needs for growth and they need

overseas exposure and our planning has absolutely got to take that

into account or we shall not be treated as serious partners.

There is another kind of motivation that we have to respond to and

that is politically and socially more broadly based. I mentioned

Scotland. I mentioned Wales. The Scots and the Welsh wish to

express themselves as Scots and Welsh people in their overseas

relationships. So in Scotland, we have a joint arts desk which we

run with the Scotish Arts Council and the British Council which

together looks after and tries to respond to Scotland's needs. The

Welsh, for example, last year were involved in cultural exchanges

with Germany. They intend to be involved next year in Catalania.

.The motivation for that comes very much out of their own national

feelings for self-expression. We in the Council, though, are in a



position to respond to that and to help them in particular through

our overseas network.

We also work closely with the art councils in joint projects. We

produce informational material together. We run showcase events

which demonstrate the arts in Britain to impresarios in Britain but

also to impresarios overseas. We sit on each other's advisory

boards. That's essential because we are looking at the same scene.

We are actually forming very similar judgments of quality, range,

availability. And we jointly run organization called The Visiting

Arts. The Visiting Arts is there to assist the accessing of

artistic events from overseas trying to be involved on the art

circuit in Britain. That, I think, is going to be for us a growing

part of our work. It will only be a relatively small part of our

concerns because we tend to focus on a wider set of relationships

but we absolutely can't ignore it and if I can take one example of

one event which I'll invent but it is partly true. I think it might

be possible to see how different starting points generate different

interests.

If we took, for example, the imaginary event of the Royal National

Theater coming to Israel, there are all sorts of starting points.

The British Council wants it to be an artistic success and that

means we want it to be a success to people in the theater, the

public, critics and we recognize that the cognoscenti in Israel will

understand what goes on in terms of structures and skills and

training behind such an event in the society from which the Royal

National Theater comes.

We're also aware that the British Foreign Office will want it

registered amongst the highest of the land that Britain rates its

broad political sense. Finally,relationship with Israel in a

the art council and the company itself wants oxygenation. It wants

contact with critics, with actors and it wants ongoing

relationships. I think I'll stop at that point, if I may because

there may well be things you want to ask.

Thank you Mr. Hensen. I'd like to tell you

something. You created a precedent which I'm

frightened of. They usually say why the discussions in the Knesset

are so long and lengthy and the answer they give is that everything

was already said but not by everybody. So here. we had a precedence

that many things new to these ears were said, fascinating from your

point of view, interesting from our point of view and please any

questions, comments, even answers on the side of the audience would

.be most welcome

Are the issues at all similar as people here

see them?



S. Aloni; They are part of them because we wanted you

to emphasize more the relations between the

government and the art council and how this confronts the

independent theaters, museums, etc., emphasizing support and

independence. You have the lottery for arts which I thought it

should be mentioned. In this country, we have lottery for many

other things but not for arts. We are preparing now something new

which you people should be proud of and this is something I would

like us to bring to our country.

I try to manage the Museum on the other side

of the street. Two short remarks and two

short questions. I would like to thank you for your intervention

and I think it is also a wonderful opportunity to thank the Arts

Council and British Council for what you have been doing here over

the years. Your staff has been extraordinary. I think many of us

have contacts with Peter and with many others. We can't thank you

enough for everything you have been doing over the years.

My second remark is a remark that comes out of experience, as a

result of the fact that I feel that your policy statements are

extremely widely interpreted even on your end. I'd like to give you

an example that we in our museum of doing an exhibition with England

called Master Drawings, the collection of the Duke of Devinshire.

There were drawings there by people like Leonardo de Vinchi and

Raphael and Michelangelo and it was wonderful for us. The Duke of

Devinshire was one day standing suddenly in my office and said would

you be interested maybe, could you, I might be willing to help you.

Then we were terribly struck with the problem of insurance because

it was enormous and we couldn't insure it. And then I turned to the

British Council. I think it was probably before your time and the

British Council said well, It is our policy to deal only with

British artists and the ones that are living British artists. I

don't have to tell you that Michelangelo is nor British nor living.

A big problem there. We thought that the project would fall through

but thanks to the leniency of your policy, I think eventually the

British Council agreed to help even with culture that was not

completely British and I thought that an extremely open view and

.wonderful

The questions I have are two. First of all, regarding the culture

of politics regarding cultural policies. What is your policy

regarding appointing representatives or cultural attaches in various

countries? Whether you have certain criteria, whether those are

political nominations, whether those are professional nominations,

I'm feeling that in this country there are sometimes discussions

probably and it is not easy to make those decisions.

The second question I have, you made interesting comparisons with

other European countries which in a sense are the same like you



since in all those countries, governments are very strongly involved

with the subsidy of the arts. On the other hand, we very much

nowadays live within an American world and it seems to me that the

American model is completely different in the sense that maybe even

absent. This in a way is also interesting because it actually means

that the government of America has decided not to intervene at all

with culture. They have some intervention with our own endowment of

the arts regarding foreign policy, I think. They completely have

decided to stay out of the picture and they feel and this is an

interesting question that culture itself should be strong enough to

make its statement also abroad and it doesn't need any policy or

policy intervention.

Ziona Feld; My question regards the art councils and also

what you said now, the Visiting Arts, the

Institute which is run jointly by the British Council and the Art

Council. How is the assessment of the artistic value of institutes

and of products of institutes is carried out by the Art Councils

both for subsidy for internal matters and subsidy of cultural

exchange.

I'll go more to the structural side of your

presentation. You described the limits of

uninvolvement of the government or the political elements within

your life. I take it that it takes a lot of common sense in order

to create this undefined border between the political and the

independence of your body. So we have a lot of comments and less

than that senses, do you have something which is more structured,

which defines the limits of involvement of the cabinet or the

government within your independence.

The second thing is as for the Art Council, what is your target

population abroad? You approach Martin, you approach people in this

community, who is your target population? Around the Consulate,

around the museum, around whatever? If you define the target

population, how do you get in contact with them? Do you outreach or

do you wait passively for people to approach you.

You spoke about traditional and contemporary arts. Traditional

British arts we know more or less, in theater, in painting, in

music, etc., etc. How do you broadcast abroad the new cultures, the

heterogeneous elements, aspects of the contemporary British arts

which is people from the old empire, people coming from seeing

London or seeing the festivals in Great Britain as some kind of a

nucleus experience drawing people inside, influencing the internal

affairs of the arts and then how do you broadcast it outside, not

Richard the Third but something more contemporary.

J. Hensen! Can I go back to the questions and work my

way through them.



A. Burg; Here in the Knesset, never mind what is the

question, you can answer whatever answer you

have.

Who appoints cultural staffs? Cultural

staffs in embassies or in the British

Council, so cultural attaches, cultural counselors, but also British

Council directors. they're all appointed by the British Council

whether they're working in embassies or whether they're working in

separate directorates called British Council Directorates, they're

all my staff and the system doesn't change.

They are professional staff and most of them are recruited from the

long term career ranks of the Council . They are required to be

involved as a matter of their careers in the business of cultural

interfacing, cultural exchange. Some of them will be area

specialists. They will be language specialists. Some of them will

be specialists in the arts. Some of them will be specialists in

some area of education or science maybe and it will be the mixture

that fits best the requirements in a particular country.

Cultural administrators or are they more

creative people?

J. Hensen; Creative people too. Absolutely. Some of

them may be artists but we don't appoint them

to cultural attache jobs just because they're artists. I think what

we want to do is to find ways of presenting artists, being involved

in artistic exchange. Curators, we have a lot of them. A number of

our staff are special curators. But it is essential that you

actually have staff who are not simply seen as bureaucrats otherwise

there won't be satisfactory interlocutors with people who work in

the art fields. There have to be credible people because of their

own background, very often professional backgrounds. Overseas, I

suppose we've got about 130 arts officers. Most of those will be

the nationals of the countries that they're working in and they will

be highly respected people in their specialist field.

The USA is a slightly bigger question and I believe that the USA is

involved in cultural policy. It is a very strong division within

the U.S. information agency and they do have cultural objectives and

we do from time to time discuss but they don't have an independent

starting point. They work directly out of with no other context

except obviously the U.S.'s foreign policy at the moment. We think

we have a broader base than that.

The question of how do you evaluate quality. It can only be done by

professional staff whose judgments you trust. How do you do it for

overseas? Let me put it this way. We work overseas here and in

other countries with impresarios, theater managers, arts



administrators who are interested in, perhaps interested in

attracting some element of the cultural field from Britain to be

involved. How do they do it? They may, if they are closely

familiar with particular staff, trust the judgment of let's say

Andrea Rose whose the head of our own visual arts department because

she is a well known professional and everything depends on the

quality and reliability of her judgment but also we might well take

directors of galleries, people are planning exhibitions and so forth

to Britain to see work, so that they can make their own evaluations.

I think the time has gone when you could actually from Britain

curate an exhibition in Israel or in France or in Spain. It has to

be a negotiated interchange of what will fit the occasion and the

gallery. There probably would have to be two commissioners and

there has to be dialogue.

In the case of Visiting Arts, we send them overseas. They go and

see work and they go see work in order to inform their own judgment

or they may be in touch with people who are the equivalent in my

professional staff here whose judgments they trust but it has to be

a question of trusting judgment and therefore knowing the people.

The political relationship, is it simply a question of common sense?

It rests on largely on one thing and that is the independence of our

chairman and the board. It rests on that. Though there is behind

it a structure of control and that's written in the form of a

financial memorandum between government, in this case the Foreign

Office and the Council and it will set out in some detail what we

may do without seeking agreement and endorsement. But it is

normally expressed financially but it also says, for example, that

you will not open or close operations in foreign countries without

.seeking out prior agreement

I signed that paper not the board. It is a personal agreement by me

because the board members are trustees of an independent charity and

they cannot allow their charitable judgment to be constrained so it

is a complicated and overlapping picture.

Traditional and contemporary art and how we communicate as it were

the ever changing scene. Again, I think, a lot happens

commercially. The Council doesn't see it as a single monopoly

conduit. That will never happen between sophisticated open

societies and as it were the global art markets will be involved

where there real demand and desire, but I think also again, we would

rely on our own professional staff who are involved. For example.

our own collection which I suppose is worth about thirty million

pounds at the moment was acquired from artists when they were young,

unknown whose careers were in development and it is those kinds of

professional relationships which you have to rely on your own staff

to forge for you. I can't remember if there are any other

questions.



Evaluation, target groups, this is a very difficult question. We

actually try to evaluate the impact of what we do. Sometimes it

makes my hands perspire because we evaluate for two reasons. We

wish to evaluate in as it were professional terms in which case you

do it through peer group review using extra advisors and

commentators from the academic world, from the arts world and that

we do but in a situation in which public money is being spent, the

Treasury also requires other forms of evaluation and they wish to

know who we see as key groups to be in contact with and Peter will

know who his key groups are here. There is nothing secret about

this. It is people that we work with in academia. It is people

that we work with in the arts but also we are interested to know if

the leaders in Israeli society in many different ways are in any way

in contact with, and we will actually run evaluations and surveys to

try and find this out. We do it quite openly and quite prepared to

communicate the results but we have to do that kind of thing because

if you come out of a public expenditure background which talks about

value for money as indeed a public expenditure background must, then

they will require evidence that your claims to be influential are

backed by some kind of measurement. It is a very difficult area and

it is an area which if it is not handled with sensitivity can be

extremely difficult and embarrassing.

A. Burg; Thank you very much.

S. Aloni; Thank you. I think we learned a lot. There

are other things which we'll bring to the

committee which you didn't emphasize. We would be grateful if

you'll send us the draft of the bill of the lottery and I hope that

our chairperson will see to it that culture will gain something.

A. Burg; We're going to gamble on it.

J. Hensen! Can I simply say at this point, Westminster

Bridge and the British Museum were both

created from the funds from previous lotteries, so we're expecting

quite a lot of building to go on. Thank you very much indeed.

Thank you very much.

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