So who will be an ambassador for the arts?

Advocacy of the arts is a skill that has gone missing, particularly in government

Here's a diverting little game: whom would you choose to be advocates for the arts? Advocacy is apparently back in vogue, with the Arts Council thinking about appointing paid ambassadors for every art form, people who will champion dance or theatre or music as enjoyable and character building and, not least, deserving of more government money.

Advocacy of the arts is a skill that has gone missing, particularly in government. Not one Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has even been a good enough advocate to convince their own party to make the arts the subject of a daily press conference in any of the recent general election campaigns. The last thing I remember the current Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell saying about British culture is that we were philistine compared to the Germans. Perhaps she will prove me wrong and show her own advocacy skills by guaranteeing that the Prime Minister will devote a day to British culture in the next general election campaign.

But the most effective and most charismatic advocates for the arts are practising artists. Deborah Bull, the former Royal Ballet star, has reinvented herself ingeniously to champion her art form on television, in speeches and newspaper articles and in her role as head of the studio theatres at Covent Garden. She has earned her place as "dance advocate". But dance advocacy needs a pas de deux rather than a solo. Deborah should be partnered by a male dancer, so that there is a national role model for young boys thinking about going into dance. On the assumption that Michael Jackson has ruled himself out for too many reasons and Justin Timberlake is otherwise engaged, let's stick to classical ballet for the time being and have Jonathan Cope, another British success story from the Royal Ballet.

Theatre is desperately in need of its advocates and propagandists, judging from the difficulties in getting young people interested. Of course, as I may have occasionally mentioned, high ticket prices and those wretched booking fees must take some of the blame. But inspiring advocacy could certainly help to counter those turn-offs. Who would be best at propagandising for theatre? Sir Richard Eyre certainly, but also some of the people we rarely hear speak about their love for the stage, an actor like Simon Russell Beale; a normally reticent producer like Sonia Friedman; or the movie star and occasional stage actor Ewan McGregor whom I once heard tell how he was inspired by seeing his friend Jude Law on the stage. It's an anecdote he should share with a much wider audience.

Opera and classical music are not short of characters with infectious enthusiasm, Bryn Terfel, Thomas Allen, Lesley Garrett. In the visual arts, Cornelia Parker, vivacious, funny and thoughtful, is someone who could make Kim Howells leave politics for a life of conceptualism. Poetry can probably not have a practitioner with easier access to the media than the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, so it is hard to look beyond him as poetry's ambassador. He should use that role, though, to help to promote a new generation of poets to the public. And he needs to look over his shoulder at TV's Daisy Goodwin, who is not without ambassadorial ambitions. They could, of course, advocate in tandem, though it is a slightly disconcerting thought.

Everyone will have their own cast lists. What is important is that the Arts Council has not just a list of advocates but also a strategy for them. Where and in what media will these people proselytise for their art forms? How will they get the message across to schoolchildren as well as to politicians? Indeed, as it is Tessa Jowell who worries about British philistinism, maybe she would care to help the Arts Council with this strategy.

¿ Bruce Springsteen is paid the compliment of two CDs of cover versions, given away with Uncut magazine. Listening to these covers, I was particularly struck by a version of "I'm on Fire" performed by the singer Heather Nova. What a difference a change of gender can make to a song. Springsteen's lyric "Little girl is your daddy home?" is a slightly roguish but conventional chat-up line when delivered by a man; but "Little boy, is your mother home?" sung by a woman sounds altogether different: a real erotic charge with a hint of illegal activity. Similarly, the line "I've got a bad desire" is a routine piece of macho posturing when sung by a male, even by the Boss; but when sung by a woman it has a more complex tangle of emotions – sex, yearning, guilt. It strikes me that there's still a whole range of songs that could have new life and new meaning breathed into them with gender change.

¿ The weekly publication ArtsIndustry, which goes to most arts venues, carries an article about sponsorship of the arts. In it, the organisation Arts & Business says that the arts are "holding steady" and "proving resilient to the current economic climate". It's just a pity that the message of hope sits a little uneasily with the front page of the journal, which carries the announcement that it will now be published on alternate weeks "due to the continued economic downturn, and its impact on the arts sector".

d.lister@independent.co.uk