The Barbican chief is fed up: “After more than a decade of direct involvement in the arts and the debate about them, there are many things of which I am sick to death. This is not just a spasm of impatience but represents my deep belief that if the attitudes behind the policies I describe did not exist, the arts would be better run, healthier, more effective, more varied and more enjoyable even than they are today. Does arts policymaking, in short, get in the way of creating the arts themselves?”