Britain Now Hostile To Arts, Says Director

Britain is in danger of becoming a “dumbed-down American culture” because of government hostility to the arts, said director Sir Peter Hall, one of the most influential figures in British theater.

The Labor government’s decision to spend $1.2 billion on a dome to celebrate the millennium while a nearby theater went out of business for lack of $328,000 was “completely daft,” Hall said. “Music, drama and the visual arts mean a great deal - particularly to children. So take it out of schools, as they are doing, and take it out of the institutions, which they are doing, and we shall be a dumbed-down American culture.”

“I don’t think Labor has an arts policy. I think, in fact, they are hostile to the arts,” Hall said.