Gov't supports dumbed-down fare, not art, Brits say

Dench, Stoppard join anti-pop cause

By ADAM DAWTREY

Two of Britain's latest Oscar winners, Judi Dench and Tom Stoppard, have joined a group of over 100 leading British arts figures to attack the U.K. government for promoting film, television and pop music at the expense of theater, opera and classical music.

The self-styled Shadow Arts Council, led by theater director Peter Hall, accuses the government of abandoning its support for the arts in favor of "popular entertainment."

The group's supporters include playwrights Alan Ayckbourn and Harold Pinter, theater director Richard Eyre, composer Andrew Lloyd-Webber, actor Michael Gambon, conductor Simon Rattle and former arts minister Mark Fisher.

Hall said, "I am doing this because I don't want my children to be fed on a diet of dumbed-down international television."

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport countered that it had already budgeted an extra £125 million ($203 million) for the arts over the next three years.