As summer arrives, so too does big culture. The Hay festival has just wound up, while later this month comes Glastonbury. Glyndebourne will have kicked into high gear just before the Edinburgh festival begins. All this, before mentioning the arrival on British shores of a thirtysomething singer-songwriter rarely referred to as Taylor Alison Swift.
Big productions, big crowds, big prices: the trend is established both in the UK and far beyond. The owner of Ticketmaster, Live Nation, recently reported a 20% jump in concert attendance in 2023 over the previous year and a 13% rise in ticket sales. The result was that its annual operating income soared 46%, to over a billion dollars. Yet while a few cash in, other parts of our culture are in grave danger. In Birmingham, the bankruptcy of the council means that local arts organisations face the loss of all their municipal funding by 2026.
