Slaughtering the Arts to pay for the Olympics

For two consecutive days now, I have stumbled accidentally on arts projects or organisations being decimated through the starvation of arts funding that seems to be a direct consequence of the spiralling costs of the London 2012 Olympics. Yesterday at lunchtime I was browsing the Birmingham Post in our downstairs cafe area when I saw to my horror that the Birmingham Opera Company was threatened with closure due to the stoppage of its funding from the Arts Council. Whilst I'm not opera-literate myself, a condition that I have no wish to defend, I'm aware of how innovative the productions of Birmingham Opera Company are, and as they said themselves in the Birmingham Post, once you get rid of organisations such as this, you can't get them back.

This evening, I went onto the website of my favourite theatre company, The Wrestling School, which performs the works of Howard Barker, arguably Britain's most innovative playwright. On the home page, was news that for the first time, The Wrestling School had failed to obtain the necessary funding for one of its productions. I remember very clearly the first time I saw one of their productions. It was at The Door studio of the Birmingham Rep (who usually premier their productions), and when it began, it was so different from anything I'd ever experienced in a theatre that it was like breathing in oxygen for the very first time. The Wrestling School urged people to sign the online petition on the Downing Street website calling for The National Lottery Fund to stop funding the Olympics. This petition has now closed.

But it's not an either or situation. I am a big fan of athletics - I attend live athletics events in Birmingham whenever I can, and last year sat in the NIA for three days with my friend Sally watching the European Indoor Athletics championships that Birmingham was privileged to host. Athletics is about the physical nobility of being a human being. It's about competing, but it's also about demonstrating the human potential at its finest. The arts is something different. It takes us out of our mundane lives and raises us up into a higher sphere. In 1997, when my life dipped into what I hope will be an all-time low, I was in Cornwall, and went to the Tate St Ives on my own. Just for two hours I was able to revel in the light and beauty of the St Ives school of painters and leave the utter misery of my existence behind.

Individuals and society need both the arts and sport. British society could benefit considerably from hosting the 2012 Olympics in so many ways. It's not just about regeneration and improved facilities. At the European indoor athletics, the renaissance of Spanish sports as a consequence of the Barcelona Olympics was there to see in terms of the success of its athletes and the passionate fervour of its supporters. The arts in Britain, already weakened by decades of funding cuts since the Thatcher era, is now severely under threat, and that that is a problem for all of us, not just those employed in the cultural sector.