Arts world at Downing Street

Public funds helped create the Tate Modern in London

Tony Blair and Culture Secretary Chris Smith met leading figures from the arts world at Downing Street on Tuesday to discuss the government's role in the arts.

A debate entitled Arts and the State also took place at the Design Council, organised by the Social Market Foundation, featuring former Royal Opera House director Sir Jeremy Isaacs and art critic Brian Sewell.

Sir Nicolas Serota with a Tony Cragg sculpture at Tate Modern

Both measures are attempts to debate state involvement in advance of a consultation paper on arts policy which a Department of Culture, Media and Sport spokesman said is expected in the coming weeks.

Arts projects have been publicly funded in the UK since World War II, but in an era of privatisation there are question marks over the way that funding is conducted.

Lord Skidelsky, the chairman of the Social Market Foundation, told the BBC: "I think the state or the taxpayer does have a responsibility to support the arts because the arts are a central expression of what we mean by civilisation.

"But I don't think it should support all the arts and there are serious questions about how government should support the arts."

What they should be doing is looking very carefully at putting money in education so people will be so interested in the arts that they will be able to support the arts themselves

Sir Alan Peacock

The arts community may be hoping for complete funding of all art forms, but it is likely it will have to compromise.

Expected at Downing Street for the consultation with the prime minister were Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery and Gerry Robinson, director of the Arts Council and other senior administrators in the arts.

State funding for the arts was the vision of economist John Maynard Keynes who believed that high levels of taxation was the only way for the arts to thrive.

The result was the precursor of today's Arts Council, which was set up during the war to boost morale through the arts.

The Arts Council is a body which works to developing, sustaining and promote the arts and distribute public funding, including lottery money.

But its founding father's ideas about the arts themselves would be at odds with its work today.

Channel 4 founder Sir Jeremy Isaacs now runs a TV production company

"He was very much an elitist as he believed the arts were a high expression of civilisation and he was also a bit of a centralist," said Lord Skidelsky, the author of a three volume biography of Keynes.

Accessibility was bound to be among the topics at Downing Street.

Sir Alan Peacock, former head of the Scottish Arts Council, taking part in the debate at the Design Council, told the BBC he hoped funding for education about the arts would be on the agenda.

"What they should be doing is looking very carefully at putting money in education so people will be so interested in the arts that they will be able to support the arts themselves," he said.

He also hoped they would discuss asking recipients of public funding to match the grant with their own fundraising.

He said this arrangement would make arts bodies "more sensitive to public opinion and public interest".