THE ART IN BRITAIN.

The 'arts' once had a somewhat precious and exclusive image associated with notions of high culture, which were usually the province of the urban and privileged metropolitan middle and upper classes or the landed aristocracy. There are activities may be amateur or professional and continue the mixture of participatory, spectator- and home-based entertainment. The funding of the mainstream arts in Britain is precarious and involves the private and public sectors. Members of the regional Arts Councils in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are appointed by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Spoil. They are responsible for diving up an annual governments grant to the arts and the finance has to be shared among cultural organizations.

 British theatre can be lively and innovative and has a deserved international reputation There are some 300 comnercial or professional theatres. The majority of West End theatres are commercial in that they are organized for profit and receive no public funds and they present a specific number of classical and innovative plays and a variety of other artistic offerings in a season. The West End theatres bring considerable financial rewards for the British economy.

Opera in Britain occupies a similar position to that of the theatres and is divided into subsidized, commercial and amateur companies The Royal Opera operates from the reb urbished facilities of the Covent Garden Theatre in London. Britain has many quality orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. There are regional symphony orchestras of high quality, such as the Halle in Manchester, the City of Birmingham Symphony, the Ulster Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. According to the DCMS National Survey of Culture, Leisure and Sport, 2006--07, the top six items in the top ten arts events attended by different household groups in descending order were theatre performances.

The history of the cinema in Britain has shown a big decline since its early days as a very popular form of mass entertainment and from 1946 when annual visits reached a total of 1 6 billion. Few British films are being made in Britain, many films made in Britain are either foreign or coproductions and the film industry has been criticized for making too many indifferent films. In I960 there were over 3,000 cinemas in Britain, but many have now either gone out of business or changed to other activities such as dancing and bingo. However, new screens have been built since 1996 and today there are 2,954 cinema screens. Annual audience figures dropped from some 501 million in 1960 to 193 million in 1970 This decline was hastened by the arrival of television and continued as new forms of home entertainment, such as videos, DVDs and the Internet increased Annual admissions had sunk to 55 million by 1984. There was a slight increase in admissions in 2009 to 173 5 million and combined box office takings in the UK and Ireland exceeded £lbn for the first time. The latest figures suggest that increased audience figures are due in part to the success of British-based films aimed at the younger generation.

British popular music increased hugely and influentially in Britain, led the world from the 1960s and was both an economic and cultural phenomenon. Since the Beatles and early Rolling Stones, the domestic market for music sales has multiplied more than sixfold. British popular and rock music still has a domestic and international following, is again slowly becoming attractive to the home and overseas youth market and constitutes a considerable industry. Music was worth £2 billion a year in 2003  and the industry employed some 125,000 people. UK record sales in 2003 saw an increase to 236 million pop albums, but a decrease to 36 million pop singles. In 2009 according to the British Phonographic Industry, the music industry grew in value for the first time in six years as record companies saw a rise in income from music sales to £929 million.

There is a wide range of museums and art galleries in Britain (some 1,860), which provide for a variety of tastes. Most of them are financed and controlled by local authorities, British Museum and the National Gallery in London, are the province of the Secretary of State for Culture. Museum and art gallery attendance in England rose to 34.7 million in 2003-4 and there were proportional increases in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Certain arts activities and their associated buildings have become virtual institutions, such as the West End, repertory companies, the Last Night of the Proms, the Albert Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, the National Theatre, the Tate Gallery (now called Tate Britain), the National Gallery and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon. They reflect Britain's lively (and internationally important) contemporary art scene.