The UK National Lottery just turned 10 this week, and celebrated a history of public gambling that brought £16 billion of construction and contribution to the country’s social infrastructure (you can see some of the funded construction projects here).
As part of the celebration, they asked the public to identify the lottery projects that had ‘made the biggest overall impact on UK life during the first decade of lottery funding.’ The winner was not the Tate Modern, the Great Court of the British Museum, or any other cultural construction. Instead, the biggest overall impact came from a national bicycling network.
Traditional arts projects didn’t win the day in other categories either, falling behind the Welsh millennium coastal park in the ‘amazing space’ category, and the New Bolton Lads and Girls club among projects having impact on children.
It makes perfect sense that the public should select high-volume, socially relevant capital projects as having the most impact on their lives. It’s just an indication of why we’re often so squeamish about doing balanced and thoughtful research on the economic impact of the arts. When we throw a wide range of options for public spending into the mix, the arts may not come out on top.
