On Tuesday night I went to see the Wizard of Oz, the wonderful (not bad actually) Wizard of Oz. Because, because, because... it was the press night.

 

Talent show-winner Danielle Hope put in a good turn as Dorothy (having recently finished an intensive three-month musical theatre course), as did the expensive looking sets. In fact they barely stopped turning, much to the amusement of Graham Norton who was sitting to my left.

And there was something rather surreal about seeing Dorothy moon-walking on the moving walkway - banging on about the yellow brick road - while Toto the (real) dog looked utterly perplexed as he was carried backwards by the mechanical floor.

It is very much "a show": a slickly crafted musical production designed to do the business for all parties. As was the National Theatre's recent hit Fela! (now moving on to Sadler's Wells) and the Royal Shakespeare Company's Matilda. And there's nothing wrong with that.

And yet the speaker list at RSA/Arts Council's recent State of the Arts conference would suggest that Andrew Lloyd Webber's show belongs to the world of entertainment and not the arts. No matter that there's an orchestra working away in the pit, or that it's a story laden with contemporary symbolism - greedy bankers, freak weather incidents, the dehumanising effects of industrialisation - or that it is likely to reach a broad audience. It is below the salt.

Conferences are dull - that's a fact. But they don't have to be the visionless effort that was the State of the Arts 2011 conference. The truth is it wasn't a conference about the state of the arts - there was no speaker representation from commercial theatre, pop music, publishing, fashion, architecture, writers, design, movies - it was an event for the subsidised arts community to spend the day together, enjoy a nice lunch and have a bit of a moan.

What a wasted opportunity. Is there nothing about reaching new audiences the subsidised sector could learn from the likes of impresarios such as Sonia Friedman and Cameron Mackintosh; or the threats and opportunities of new technology from Universal music or 1xtra; or about nurturing new talent and ideas from Random House or Burberry's Christopher Bailey.

The arts in the UK are the envy of the world. It's a vibrant, successful sector delivering for the public (and its purse), which has flourished through a close working relationship between the subsidised and commercial sectors. It is about time those organising the State of the Arts conference grasped that the sector's future lies in its ability to work together and inspire each other, and not by sub-dividing it into (worryingly smug )little cliques. Dorothy understood that.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

John Woodward is probably not a name you are familiar with. And given events at last night's Oscars, it's likely to be one he'd take a moment or two to recognise. Wherever he was last night, the chances are the ex-boss of the UK Film Council was toasting the success of his soon-to-be-abolished old employer.

 

Woodward established the UK Film Council a little over a decade ago. By his own admission it was always a bit of a fudge, and at the time the government decided to abolish it, Woodward was actively looking at ways he could merge his institution with the BFI. But it wasn't to be and the axe fell.

Jeremy Hunt told me recently he thought he made the decision too quickly but in hindsight he was pleased he had done so. I wonder if he will be saying the same thing next year. That is not to pre-judge how well the BFI might now pick up the gauntlet and support the British film industry, just that the culture secretary is a shrewd businessman and he knows as well as anyone just how difficult it is to build a successful company.

And there can be little argument that Woodward had built the UK Film Council into a successful outfit. After a slow start their nose for a good bet had become rather refined. Not only did they make a crucial investment into the King's Speech to allow it to go into production, but they helped facilitate the tax breaks that brought Hollywood production money to the UK. That led to another Oscar success last night. Double Negative, the Soho-based visual effects company, rightly won the best special effects award for the stunning computer graphics on Inception.

Those hard-won tax breaks have meant last year saw record foreign investment into the UK film production business, with over £1bn spent making, or partially making, movies here. The UK cinema had a bumper year too, with innovations such as the digital screens not only bringing movie lovers to the big screen, but opera, theatre and ballet buffs too. The digital screens were another UK Film Council-backed project.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

The Grand Old Lady of New York's Central Park - the Metropolitan Museum of Art - was in town on Tuesday for British Fashion Week, and she had quite an entourage: Anna Wintour, Stella McCartney and Samantha Cameron.

But that's the pull of the museum. Thomas Campbell, its British boss, was here to launch the Met's forthcoming exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, which opens there on 4 May.

The show is also the star of its famous Costume Institute Gala on 2 May. Not only is it one of the world's most glamorous affairs, but it also pays for a whole section of the museum's annual activity. Anna Wintour is the fundraiser's co-chair and talks here about the impact of the late Alexander McQueen.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Reddit
• - What's this?