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; חברי הוועדה: היו"ר א. בורג י. בא-גד ש. יהלום מוזמנים: 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 מזכירת הוועדה: י. גידלי נרשם ע"י: חבר חמתרגמיס בע"מ סדר היום : 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. כלומר: 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. He said: "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? J. Hensen: 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 to me: "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." Then he said: "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. S. Aloni: 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. A. Burg: 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 J. Hensen: 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. Martin Weil: 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. A. Burg: 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. J. Hensen: 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. A. Burg: 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. A. Burg: Thank you very much. הישיבה ננעלה בשעה 00;12