CULTURE HAS taken centre stage in the contest for the French Socialist Party’s presidential nomination after one of the favourites pledged to double arts spending and kick-start a new “cultural spring”.
Martine Aubry said that if elected president she would raise the culture ministry’s budget by up to €1 billion, or 50 per cent, over five years, creating 10,000 jobs and a further 10,000 training places for young people. Subventions for venues and artists would be increased and children would be given better access to cultural activities.
“The first of our major areas of work is artistic education,” Ms Aubry wrote in Le Monde.
She criticised the “idiotic choices” taken by the culture ministry and vowed to make “the knowledge and practice of culture” one of the bases of France’s education system. Her plan would be funded by closing tax loopholes.
Ms Aubry, the leader of her party until she stepped down last month to contest its primary, is known for her interest in literature, art and theatre. As mayor of Lille since 2000 she has presided over a major increase in arts spending in the northern city.
Her eye-catching proposals have dominated debate between the leading primary contenders in recent days, forcing some of her rivals to come up with their own ideas and provoking French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s government into an angry defence of its culture record.
Arnaud Montebourg, who is also contesting the primary, proposed the introduction of a “single price” under €10 for entry to cultural sites such as theatres and galleries.
Writing in Libération, he said the culture ministry had become “a cemetery of lost ambition” that was too focused on big institutions and industries. His plans would be paid for directly by new taxes on private television companies’ profits from advertising and on the “gigantic profits” of internet service providers.
“If culture is a public service, like water, gas or electricity, its cost should remain modest and therefore accessible, as it is when one goes to the swimming pool or the municipal ice-rink,” Mr Montebourg said.
François Hollande, the former party leader who is running ahead of Ms Aubry in the latest opinion polls, seemed wrong-footed by his chief rival’s plan and warned against candidates trying to “out-bid” one another.
“Culture will be one of our priorities, but a priority that is not only for the culture ministry to deal with,” he said, a reference to the local authorities, which spend more on culture in France than the central government.
French politicians have long seen electoral benefits in flaunting a love of culture. The socialist former president François Mitterrand was said to strictly put aside blocks of time each week to read novels, while Mr Sarkozy’s entourage have briefed in recent months that he has discovered a taste for the French classics and nouvelle vague cinema.
In a lifestyle interview in Paris Match magazine recently, Ms Aubry spoke extensively about her passion for the arts and her plans to rejuvenate the sector if she became president.
As mayor of Lille, she has overseen a big increase in spending on culture, from €26.7 million in 2001 to €44.4 million last year, and the city – once synonymous with the heavy industry of northern France – has redefined itself as an artistic centre. It was European Capital of Culture in 2004, and major arts projects, including four new galleries and cultural spaces and the reopening of the opera hall, have been completed under Ms Aubry’s watch.
In a sharp riposte to the socialists’ criticism, French culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand – a nephew of the late socialist president – said: “If you focus on money, it might be a sign that you don’t have any real ideas.”