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Business English: British Council ditches cultural shop window

The council says a shift to a more global remit reflects waning public interest in Germany. von Hugh Williamson (Berlin)

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British Council ditches cultural shop window

For the British Council in Germany, 2007 was the year when globalisation caught up with, and overtook, the UK's traditional efforts to sell its cultural wares to the world. After decades offering the German public English language courses, British exhibitions and libraries of English books and newspapers, the British Council last year ditchted its traditional role as a national "shop window". Instead, it adopted a new focus: networking with experts on European and global themes such as migration, demography and climate change. The council says the shift to a more global remit reflects waning public interest in Germany for its traditional offering. "Fewer and fewer people were taking language courses and using the libraries," admits Michael Bird, the council's director in Berlin. The boom in using the internet to find out about, and then flying on budget airlines to visit, Britain has "made our traditional model obsolete", says Mr Bird. The spread of cheaper language schools was another factor. The hype around "global events" such as the 2006 football World Cup in Germany made a difference too. "The World Cup did more in a single month for UK perceptions of Germany than cultural relations organisations achieved in many years," he admits. But not everyone is happy with the change. "I'm sceptical," says Annette Becker, the executive director of Berlin's Germany-British Society, a voluntary association. "You can't walk away from caring for bilateral relations just because they appear to be working well." The UK government-funded council, which is based in London and has offices in 110 countries, became entangled recently in a diplomatic row with Russia, after Moscow said it had to shut its regional offices. In Germany, where there are no problems with the host government, the council has reduced the number of branches from five to one, in Berlin, which is closed to the public. The change, which is part of a Europe-wide strategy, was needed to "keep up with changing times", says Mr Bird. "We couldn't keep using UK taxpayers' money on a shop window," he says, when few people were looking through it. Statistics suggest the public can indeed live without the British Council: 1.3m Germans visited London in 2006, up from 1.1m in 2000. After France, Germany was London's second most important source of European visitors. A record 301,000 British people made trips to Berlin in 2006. There was only "a handful" of complaints when our public facilities closed, Mr Bird says.

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