The pain…
Sir Andrew Motion, chairman of the MLA and former Poet Laureate, has joined the siren chorus warning of the effects of the government’s scorched earth policy for the arts, highlighting the local government sector.
‘If the Big Society means we aspire to create more civilised places where humanity prevails, and the individual spirit thrives, then artistic and cultural activity is not just indispensable, it must sit at the core, and national and local government must work together in one cause’ he said today.
‘Most of our country’s population up and down the country rely on libraries, museums, exhibitions, record offices and performances, funded or part-funded by local government. Towns and cities stripped of books, arts, theatres and celebrations of our past and future would be a grave threat to a bigger, better society.
‘But we must recognise the pressure local councils are under to protect much more expensive services, ranging from road maintenance to care of children and the elderly. We are obliged to ensure that the benefits of the relatively small sums of funds that go on arts and culture are accurately targeted, spread wide, and act as a catalyst for creativity. In this climate, it has never been more important to safeguard one nation whose heritage, culture and international excellence is more than the sum of its parts.’
It follows the revelation yesterday that DCMS has told arts organisations to look at cuts of between 25% and 40%, which Nicholas Serota, Vikki Heywood, Jude Kelly, Nick Starr, Julia Peyton-Jones and Alistair Spalding lined up yesterday to call ‘devastating’. ACE would have to cut at least 200 of its 880 RFOs, and the panel pleaded with the government not make them face ‘front-loading’ of the cuts from which the cultural and creative sector would never recover. Since then, Serota has gone into print in the Evening Standard to say we – part of our fifth biggest industry, tourism - are facing a cultural recession at the high point of a creative golden age.
A&B ‘s Colin Tweedy has also added his two-pennorth on behalf of private sector funding: ‘Every walk of British life is being challenged at this time. No one will be exempt. The private sector should be seen as a supplement to the public sector, but rarely a substitute. But together the public and private sectors are a powerful advocate, both for continuity and change. Let us not try and divide the two at this time.’
…and the pleasure
No thought of a scorched earth in Derry~Londonderry this morning as it celebrates being named UK City of Culture 2013, beating Birmingham, Sheffield and Norwich (my picture shows the mayor Callum Eastwood at the moment of triumph for the ‘Just Say Yes’ campaign). It’s a city small enough still to have a town clerk, who is Valerie Watts: ‘We have been given a once in a lifetime chance not only to share our innate talent, creativity and energy with the rest of the world, but also to transform this region forever’ she said as recession-blind champagne corks popped last night. ‘This is a new chapter in our journey from plantation to peace, and its legacy will last for generations. We hoped that the judging panel would understand our bold ambition and passion to tell a new story’.
More than that, Derry and the regeneration company Ilex are committing £200m mostly on getting a cultural quarter made out of the old Ebrington Barracks of odious memory, creating 3,000 jobs in 2013 alone, and hoping for another honour. They want the ancient walls of Derry declared a World Heritage Site in time for the 400th anniversary of them being built to keep Catholics out and Protestants safely in, which also happens to fall in 2013.
‘Cut us, don’t kill us’ plea as 40% cuts loom
The arts are being told to expect cuts of 25% to 40% which will mean ACE funding to 200 of its 880 RFOs being stopped altogether.
Cultural leaders led by the Tate’s Sir Nicholas Serota have made an unprecedented plea to the government not to ‘front load’ the cuts but to be given time for them to worked in. ‘You can cut us, but don’t kill us’ was their bleak plea this morning.
They have days to make their case, Serota said, with culture secretary Jeremy Hunt wanting to make an early Comprehensive Spending Review settlement with the Treasury for 2011-2014.
As it is, theatres are likely to go dark, museums to close for some days a week, new work commissions to cease and the arts’ contribution to urban regeneration wound down. The regions, less attractive to philanthropy and tourism than London and trebly bitten by loss of support from local authorities and from the abolished regional development boards, will fare the worst with companies and venues closing, never to reopen.
The Arts Council have told clients this week that even if the cuts are not imposed in full immediately, they can expect at least 10% cuts in 2011-12, twice as bad as their worst guess. In his letter to them, ACE chief executive Alan Davey said he will ‘argue that any cut needs to be managed intelligently and in a way that protects the achievements of the last 15 years. We need to be sure that any cuts we do get do not all take place in the first year of a four-year cycle. That would be doubly damaging’.
Nor will there be respite in philanthropic giving which the government puts great store by. It emerged this morning that leading philanthropists, including Sir John Ritblat, Anthony D’Offay, Lord Stevenson, Dr Keith Howard (a long-standing supporter of Opera North) and Terry Bramall, the millionaire builder, have written to Hunt to say giving cannot be expected to make god subsidy shortfalls. Dame Vivien Duffield is believed to be writing separately to the same effect. ‘Philanthropic giving is very carefully balanced’ said Julia Peyton-Jones of the Serpentine Gallery. ‘This money is freely given and can just as freely be taken away’.
Jude Kelly of the Southbank Centre said that the cultural offer was a vital part of the bid that won the 2012 Olympics for London, having impressed the IOC ‘in terms of the scale of it, the vibrancy, the outstanding quality, and the models whereby world class art links up with education and communities in a way that has taken many years to build’ she said. ‘To then be ravaged by cuts will make us unable to deliver all the things we said we would do’.
The arts have become essential to regional revival, said Vikki Heywood of the RSC. Based in Stratford, she said that the company is worth £58m to the economy of the West Midlands, and will be worth a lot more when their new theatre opens at the end of the year, but the cuts would reverse that.
Sadler’s Wells has become the national dance theatre but, said Alastair Spalding, the commissions, productions and off-site performances which have turned round its finances and reputation will stop.
Serota said he had been in Liverpool yesterday to accept the freedom of the City on behalf of Tate Liverpool. ‘It means we can herd sheep past the council offices, and if we were military to march through the city with drums playing and bayonets fixed’ he said. ‘We will not be fixing bayonets. Not yet’.
The Ashmolean, Blist’s Hill and Herbert Museum and Art Gallery have all beaten by the rejuvenated Ulster Museum in Belfast to the £100,000 Art Fund Prize for the museum of the year
The Ulster Museum was one of a generation of Victorian patrician institutions based on the enthusiasms of local history and botanical societies whose collections were installed in large and forbidding neo-classical piles that tended to shout “Keep Out!” to anyone not of a certain scholarly standing.
That it has pipped populist displays like Ironbridge Gorge’s Blist’s Hill (the recreation of a 19th century town), the transformed academic faculty that is Oxford’s Ashmolean, and Coventry’s Herbert which is already the Guardian’s Family Friendly museum of the year, says everything about how the Belfast contender has shaken off its austere grandeur.
“We were moved and invigorated by our visit to the Ulster Museum” said Kirsty Young, the chair of the judges who were Kathy Gee, museums and heritage adviser; A C Grayling, professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, London; Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London; Sally Osman, former director of communications, at the BBC; Lars Tharp, director of the Foundling Museum; and the artist Jonathan Yeo.
“Here” said Young “is a museum that shows how much can be achieved, and one that is building a lasting legacy. We were impressed by the interactive learning spaces on each level that are filled with objects which visitors are encouraged to touch and explore, and by how the museum’s commitment to reaching all parts of its community is reflected in the number and diversity of its visitors. The transformed Ulster Museum is an emblem of the confidence and cultural rejuvenation of Northern Ireland.”
And Stephen Deuchar, director of the sponsor, the Art Fund, added: “Ulster Museum is a brilliant example of a museum that is passionate about its public. The redevelopment is stunning, capturing its visitors’ minds and hearts with exceptional creative flair.”
The Ulster Museum re-opened last October after a three year refurbishment costing £17.5m.
It was first founded in 1821 and opened 12 years later in a purpose-built neo-classical building in the Botanic Gardens as the Belfast Municipal Museum and Art Gallery. It was the traditional, general museum popular with the Victorians which sprang up in our major cities overt the century, with five sections devoted to antiquities, geology, botany, arts and local history.
It became the Ulster Museum with national recognition by Act of Parliament in 1962, with an extension opened in 1964, and in recent years it has been building up its contemporary art holdings.
In 1998 the museum merged with Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and the Ulster-American Museum to form the National Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland.
But in 2006 it closed for its refurbishment, reopening three years later with a new 23-metre high entrance atrium with glass and steel walkways leading into a series of galleries visible at once at different levels, dominated by a Window on Our World giant display tower, scaling four levels and housing the most iconic objects from across the museum’s collections.
The Window on Our World includes the Chambers Car and Edmontosaurus dinosaur - the most complete real dinosaur fossil on display in Ireland – as well as smaller objects such as a Viking brooch, gold coins from the Armada treasures; exotic butterflies and bugs from the nature collection.
Using new technology, the display tower also projects 360 degree audio images onto the four walls of the gallery.
A new restaurant has been created with a terrace leading out into Botanic Gardens, integrating the museum and the gardens.
There are also three new interactive learning zones and a new high-level gallery for the display of glass, ceramics, silver and jewellery.
One of the museum’s most famous objects is the 7th century BC Egyptian mummy, Takabuti, newly conserved and brought back on display, as the centrepiece of a new display exploring life and death in ancient Egypt.
For the first time, The Art Fund Prize website hosted a poll asking the public to vote for their favourite nominated museum or gallery, and to received 73,000 votes and over 40,000 comments. In May, the Ulster Museum was also chosen as the best permanent exhibition at the annual UK Museums and Heritage Awards.
“This is the first time in Northern Ireland’s history that a prestigious cultural prize of this nature has been awarded to an institution in the region” said Tim Cooke, director of National Museums Northern Ireland. “This prize will encourage us as we endeavour to play a meaningful role at the heart of our changing
society.”
“Rejuvenating the Ulster Museum in Belfast has been a deeply rewarding and purposeful experience coinciding with a remarkable period of change in Northern Ireland’s history. The public appetite for the new space and for engagement with our collections has been huge – as evidenced by the record visitor numbers and the massive level of support for the public vote element of The Art Fund Prize.”
Response
In ai 259 we reported Arts Council of Wales’s decision to cut its funded organisations by half, including the Llangollen Musical Eisteddfod and Rhyl’s Pavilion Theatre. ACW chief executive Nick Capaldi explains the thinking, and what happens next.
In its last edition, AI reported on the first stage of our investment review, the most comprehensive examination of funding that we’ve ever undertaken. We’d set ourselves a straightforward task: to support a network of organisations across Wales, large and small, international and local, that are vibrant, dynamic and durable. Organisations whose work inspires, touches and engages us.
We invited 116 organisations to send us their business plans. We also looked more widely at how we use our funds, and what we’ve achieved. It’s been a reassuring process. What we’ve found is that more people than ever before are taking part in, or attending, the arts in Wales. Our lottery capital investment has created award winning arts buildings that are generating new jobs and contributing to economic renewal across Wales. Our country’s artists and arts organisations are increasingly enjoying acclaim on the world stage.
At the end of June we announced the results of our examination. We’ve identified 71 organisations who will form our new portfolio of revenue funded organisations. 32 organisations will no longer be revenue funded after March 2011, and we’ll be exploring other ways of helping them to continue. We’ve put in place transition arrangements and we’ll do what we can to secure the best possible outcome for those facing an uncertain future.
In reality, however, nothing is guaranteed for anyone. We all know that the economic outlook is grim. But this isn’t why we originally undertook our investment review. It was never about cuts, it was about using existing funds to best effect. However, at this point in time, we’ve only been able to identify who we want to work with. We can’t say, yet, how much they’ll get. We should know in December, which is when we expect to know our future levels of funding from the Assembly Government.
In the meantime, we won’t be sitting idly by. We’ll continue to present the case for the arts with vigour. And we’ll also be looking to see how we can reduce our own costs, to re invest back into “front line” arts activity. The public rightly demands that the institutions they finance are efficient and effective. Like everyone else, we must do our bit and we’ll be saying more about this in December.
In the early autumn we’ll be providing more detail on some of the new ideas in our investment review. The focus, for entirely proper reasons, has been on our funded organisations, but we mustn’t lose sight of what ultimately we’re trying to achieve – high quality arts for the widest possible audience in English and in Welsh. Throughout our deliberations we’ve asked ourselves “what is this going to do to raise standards, or to develop new audiences?”
Not all of the answers will be provided by the new portfolio of organisations, so we’re proposing new funds to develop community generated arts activity. We’ve identified a country wide network of theatres, arts centres and galleries, encouraging them to act as creative entrepreneurs providing high quality activity and services to artists. There’ll be funds for commissioning, production and touring, and we’re going to take a new approach to funding festivals through the lottery. Wales’s international festivals are a vital part of our work, they’re ripe for development, but we need new, more imaginative ways of investing in their future growth.
The centrepiece of our new strategy will be a more emphatic commitment to arts and young people. The arts make an enormous difference to the lives of everyone, but especially young people, so we need to do whatever we can to broaden our approach, making sure that more children and young people in Wales, wherever they live, whatever their circumstances, can participate in and enjoy a wider range of arts activity.
So that’s where we are. The period between now and December is critical. We’ve acted today to keep the arts vibrant and strong for tomorrow, and we’ve got a strategy that we believe works. Our task now is to persuade the Welsh Assembly Government, who will challenge us and press us to get the best value out of public funds. That’s fine, but we hope, too, that they’ll recognise, as they have in the past, the tremendous benefits that the arts brings to the people of Wales.
We’ve set out our stall. We’ve been bold, and we’ve made choices. It’s time now to get behind the people who really matter – those leading, creating, and promoting the arts. In the end it’s to them that we look to build a stronger future for the arts in Wales.
News focus
The British Film Institute, founded in 1933 to promote the understanding and appreciation of the culture and history of film and with a Royal Charter for the last 26 years, is at a crossroads. The BFI National Archive has the world’s richest and most significant collection of film and television, with almost a million titles, and BFI Southbank, as it has been since its transformation from the National Film Theatre in 2007, screens over 1,000 films a year as well as giving access to the archive in its mediatheque there. It runs the London Film Festival every autumn, and the annual London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and there are new BFI mediatheques giving access to the archive opening around the country. Yet while the film industry is worth £6 billion to the economy as gross domestic product and the BFI has just secured a big new business partnership, a developing future as a national institution that seemed to be securely mapped out for the institute three months ago is in doubt.
The credit card American Express has joined a sponsorship “multi-year partnership” with the BFI in what the institute’s director, Amanda Nevill, described as an “ingenious and inventive|” deal across the BFI’s activities.
Although the value of the sponsorship is not being disclosed, it is the largest the BFI has ever secured.
It will pay for the October London Film festival, whose seven year partnership with the Times ended last year, as well as quarterly screenings at the BFI IMAX at the Southbank. And the Screen Epiphanies series of showing introduced by prominent filmmakers, which in the past has included John Hurt, Sam Taylor-Wood, Frank Skinner and Juliet Stephenson, will also benefit.
There is also a contribution to the BFI’s running costs, and in return Amex cardholders are offered priority ticketing.
“This new partnership further strengthens our ties within the industry and builds on our heritage in film as founding sponsor of the Tribeca Film Festival and a regular supporter of the Sundance Film Festival” said Raymond Joabar, UK managing director of American Express. “We look forward to working with the BFI on developing and promoting a programme of events that will celebrate the artistry of film and continue to raise the visibility of British film talent and the BFI London Film Festival both in the UK and abroad.”
For Nevill the new association is key at a crucial time. ”Over 58% of the BFI’s total funding is self-generated and in the current economic climate private sponsors and donors have never been so important” she said. “We are proud of the strong cultural mix of contemporary and historical film programmes that we deliver to new and existing audiences in Britain. It feels like a festival for 52 weeks of the year and we are looking forward to working with American Express to entertain, challenge and inspire those audiences in equal measure.”
Government pulls out of
National Film Centre
The £166m National Film Centre which would have completed the BFI’s vision of its future is on hold following the coalition government’s decision to withdraw the promise of £45m made by the previous government in only October last year.
The decision was described by Amanda Nevill, the BFI’s director, as “crushing”, but said the institute’s governors made decide to proceed piecemeal, so important is it to their plans.
The government cut came with a promise from the culture minister, Ed Vaizey, that he would examine how the government supports film, in direct grants and in tax breaks. A BFI spokesman said: “We are concerned that film is bearing the brunt. Over 50% of the DCMS cuts announced are coming from the film sector. Film is a critical component of Britain’s future cultural and economic prosperity and we welcome the minister’s commitment to reviewing government’s support for the industry. Our one plea is that this is done as a matter of urgency.
The NFC, which would occupy the vacant Hungerford site next to Jubilee Gardens and the Royal Festival Hall, was the personal project of the film difrector Anthony Minghella who was chairman of the BFI at the time of his death in 2008.
The new NFC would give the BFI the opportunity to shift its administrative headquarters from near Tottenham Court Road, and the move part of the BFI Southbank mediatech to five new cinemas. It would also be a showcase for the institute’s archive and conservation work and a hub for the delivery of new digitised work.
Government funding would also help encourage the trawl for private funding for much of the rest of the cost, and though the intention is still to build the NFC the planned opening date of 2015 may not now be achievable.
The proposed merger of the BFI with the UK Film Council, which was also but agreed at the time of the May election, is also on hold. The UKFC was created in 2000 to represent the film industry and to take over the role of lottery funding for film projects from the Arts Council.
The merger would reunite the two sides of the industry in this country, which contributed £400m a year to the Treasury in return for £250m in tax breaks that enable filmmaking here.
The UKFC receives £26m in subsidy, £14.5m of which is passed on to the BFI.
‘Big Vault’ to save film
heritage goes ahead
The government’s promise of contributing £25m to conserve the volatile and priceless archive of film held by the BFI is being upheld.
The scheme involves the creation of a “Big Vault” underground store in the West Midlands where film can be conserved, stabilised and kept with the minimum of decay.
The archive is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year with an appeal for “most Wanted” missing films. Early cellulose nitrate prints, still in use until 1951, contained small amounts of silver so that many films were melted down to extract the precious metal. Some were deliberately destroyed by studios so that they could get rights to remake the titles, but many have survived in cupboards, attics and cellars.
The institute has issued a list of the 75 most wanted lost British movies dating from 1913 to as recently as 1973. In particular, the institute is looking for an early black and white silent movie by Alfred Hitchcock, The Mountain Eagle - which Hitchcock himself described as “truly awful”. It was Hitchcock’s second feature film, and would join his early classics Blackmail (1929) and Easy Virtue featuring Isabel Jeans and Franklin Dyall, pictured here.
Charity Commission report highlights cultural activity’s pubic benefit
Four arts organisations at different ends of the size scale have been given ringing endorsements by the Charity Commission for their public benefit work.
The Royal Opera House, The Castle Players, Gwent Ballet Theatre - known as the Independent Ballet Wales - and the Young Concert Artists all have charitable status and have been assessed as exemplars to other charities for what can be done for the public good.
The assessments help to demonstrate that the public benefit principles are flexible enough to apply to very different arts charities in terms of profile, size and operation, yet clear enough to distinguish them from organisations which are not charities.
The commission’s report found that they “provide real examples for the rest of the charity sector, to help in their awareness and understanding of public benefit” it said.
“The arts charities have shown how they are accessible to a wide range of people, which confirms their uniqueness as charities” said Dame Suzi Leather, chair of the commission.
In an exhaustive appraisal, the commission looked at the Royal Opera House’s range of ticket pricing which went from £210 down to £4 in the 2009 season, to give ‘a wide range of ticket prices which will be affordable to those who cannot afford the most expensive tickets’. It also looked at other benefits, such as free lunchtime concerts, big screen broadcasts and schools matinees, training programmes and its complex and wide-reaching education activities.
Largely self-financing, the Castle Players is a community drama group based at Barnard Castle, County Durham, which each summer stages a play – usually a Shakespeare comedy - each summer in the grounds of the Bowes Museum, and smaller winter production which tour to rural venues. Ticket prices range from £14 to £1, and many seats are free, and 80 members, many of them participants.
Independent Ballet Wales, formed in 1986 and based in Newprot in Gwent, offers classes and workshop led by professionals and tour the UK and Ireland. They run workshops in schools and community centres, and in 2007-9 4,000 took part.
And the Young Concert Artists Trust (YCAT), also based in Covent Garden, which sets out to support and promote outstanding young classical soloists and chamber ensembles by giving them support and management, typically over a period of three to five years, to help establish themselves professionally. It also acts as mentor for finalists in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition.
In her first pronouncement, new London Arts chair urges ‘hold your nerve’
London’s arts organisations have been told to hold their nerve in the face of funding cuts, and to ‘think smarter’.
The warning comes from the controversial new chairman of Arts Council England, London, former Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley.
In 2008 the Evening Standard under Wadley campaigned vigorously for Boris Johnson in the election for Mayor of London, which Johnson won. But his nomination of Wadley as chair of the London arts board last September was opposed by the then culture secretary, Ben Bradshaw.
After a re-run of the appointment process, Wadley was approved by the new Secretary of State, Jeremy Hunt, who has imposed a 4% cut on this year’s funding of the Arts Council. Since the Budget, the arts are facing cuts of at least 5% a year for the next four years.
‘Yes, it is a challenging time to take a job in the arts and yes, we must all think smarter, but we must hold our nerve,’ said Ms Wadley in her first pronouncement since becoming chairman. ‘I will do all I can to advocate for the arts in London - and defend excellence and innovation.
‘’London is a cultural powerhouse, and many people choose to live and work in London because of its fantastic cultural life. With the 2012 Olympics just two years away and more visitors than ever coming to London, it is critical that this vitality is maintained’ she added.
The foreseen cuts to the arts are a knock-on from the 25% cuts being meted out to all non-ring-fenced government departments, including DCMS, with an announcement from the Treasury on the comprehensive spending review expected in mid-October.
‘Confidence in the cultural sector must be maintained and we must not lose sight of the immeasurable contribution the arts make to all our lives,’ said Wadley, who has also joined the board of the Northern Ballet Theatre, the Mayor of London’s music education steering group, the advisory council of Arts & Business and is an advisor to Greenhouse Schools Project, a charity which provides sport and dance programmes in deprived areas of London. ‘Our partnership with the London boroughs is key here and I am looking forward to working with them in the coming months.
‘Our arts bring billions of pounds into the UK’s economy and it is vital that London does not lose its economic competitiveness - or its creative edge.’
Meanwhile, as part of last year’s planned Arts Council economy exercise, Arts Council London last week left its offices in Clerkenwell to move into the national headquarters in Westminster.
Crude gestures
BP’s travails across the ever murkier water are visiting them this side too, in their guise as art sponsors. It’s proving to be something of a toxic brand here too, with the National Portrait Gallery bracing itself for protesting environmentalists block the entrance to the BP Portrait Award which opened yesterday. And it’s not as if the NPG hasn’t got enough controversy to cope with – the winner of BP’s £25,000 first prize this time is Daphne Todd with her portrait of the corpse of her dead mother. But the NLG isn’t the only gallery likely to fine association wth BP awkward. It hasn’t passed the notice of activists that the chairman of the Tate is now Lord Brown, BP’s colourful former boss, and the pickets are expected ot be out on Monday when the Tate celebrates its 20 years of sponsorship by BP. The activists, perhaps taking cue from the Tate’s current show Rude Britannia, have dubbed themselves “Good Crude Britannia’, and the Tate and NPG aren’t the only arts institutions that have benefited from BP’s largesse, reckoned to be well over a £1m a year. The British Museum and the Royal Opera House have too, and together they have drawn a deep breath and issued a statement: ‘The income generated through corporate partnerships is vital to the mixed economy of successful arts organisations and enables each of us to deliver a rich and vibrant cultural programme. We are grateful to BP for their long-term commitment, sharing the vision that our artistic programmes should be made available to the widest possible audience.’
Bird flies
Meanwhile, the Tate is losing its well respected chief operating officer. Three years after joining the taste Julian Bird is to succeed Richard Pulford as ceo of the Society of London Theatre and the Theatre Management Association, starting in November.
£1m lift for Bishop’s organ
A minor triumph for the quiet man of arts management, successor as SBC’s ceo to the less reserved Michael Lynch last year. In his recent profile in Classical Music magazine Alan Bishop had this to say: ‘It’s funny how, when a newcomer arrives, certain things stand out, and this was on for me. It was a shame that time and money ran out before it could be done, but I am I determined that by 2013 we will have a magnificent fully working organ, my one particular passion. It’ going to cost over £2m o, but it has to happen’. Well, the Heritage Lottery Fund habve juist handed him nearly half of it, £950,000.
.
Piggybankgate
I have to say that I am no closer to finding out precisely why the Arts Council’s reserve fund is down from £18.4m to only £2.4m having been permitted by the DCMS to use £9m to offset in the in-term cuts of £19m. Where is the missing £7m? When I asked Alan Davey, he said he had no idea, I’d have to ask the DCMS. I did: “The £7m was from reserves built up by ACE over many years. These are public funds and, given the current climate, are now being used to meet the department’s contribution to the wider government deficit reduction plan” I was eventually told.
It is public funding, but it is dedicated public funding, even though the Arts Council has been forbidden to use it on several occasions when it has asked the department, as it is obliged to. This is because of arcane and complex Treasury rules which mean use of reserves held by non-governmental public bodies has to be covered by other funds held by DCMS. ACE’s reserve was created in 2003 from £10m accrued when the regional arts councils merged with the national body in 2002, and has been added to by interest and other contributions. Some of the money that came from the regional arts councils, for instance, was gifts, bequests, and earnings - what proportion of the reserve was actually public funding and what was not isn’t clear.
The first question is, if ACE had not agreed to the £7m being used, would Treasury/DCMS have allowed the £9m to be used to soften the blow to the “front line services” Jeremy Hunt said would not be affected, or would they now be facing a 3% cut instead of 0.5%? Secondly, if it is really a DCMS fund for it to use as it or the Treasury sees fit, why has it been left with the Arts Council? The third question is, what of other reserve funds accumulated by arts organisations like the national museums, the Royal Opera House and the Southbank Centre – is that money available “to meet the department’s contribution to the wider government deficit reduction plan”, or on the other hand will their grant-in-aid be reduced pro rata? The fourth is, if the reserves are, indeed, devoted to the cultural organisations that have built and hold them, what does this say about the endowment funds the culture secretary is urging arts organisations to create – will they be “public funds… to meet the department’s contribution to the wider government deficit reduction plan” too?
At their press conference last week Alan Davey and Liz Forgan put a brave face on the whole thing, and played the straight bat vital if they are to have any kind of relationship with the Jeremy Hunt and Ed Vaizey after this, but they must furious. I gather that Davey has insisted that £5m of the £7m estreated in this way gets returned in the spending review, but how will we be able to tell?
And the point is…
Meanwhile, A&B have asked me to point out that ACE had it wrong when they announced that they had been deducted £200,000, and there might be an insight here into what can go wrong in public finance. ACE announced a £0.2m cut having rounded up to the nearest decimal point from £0.16m. That might be all right for the Treasury working in their billions, trillions and gazillions, but in the arts the difference of pence can be crucial. So, for the record, A&B have been deducted £1,600,000 of 4%, not £2 million which would be 5%.
0.5% cuts across board
Despite Arts Council England having gone for an ‘equal misery for all’ programme to meet the governments demand for a £19m, 4%, in year cut, announced today, the government pledge to maintain front line services in the arts has been broken.
Regularly funded organisations will have .5% cuts, or an average of £2,000 each, and the cuts will not be applied until January to give organisations time to adjust programmes.
Cuts to RFOs would have been 3% had it not been for £9m being taken from ACE’s £18.4m reserve, and DCMS have taken another £7m from the reserve for as yet unexplained reasons, leaving £2.4m in the emergency fund.
Worst hit are Creative Culture and Education which loses £1.6m and Arts & Business, £200,000, a 4% reduction to each. Of the RFOs, the ten biggest funded take the brunt, led by the Royal Opera House with £142,000. Colin Tweedy of A&B said: ‘We will endeavour to continue to do our utmost to see private sector investment in culture grow in the years to come and that the Government’s wish to see philanthropy take centre stage is realised’.
‘For some it will be serious but we hope that it will not be so difficult that it cannot be managed’ said ACE chair Liz Forgan. Chief executive Alan Davey said the reason why ACE took a bigger hit than other DCMS NGOs was the existence of its reserve fund, but he said front line services would inevitably be affected.
The Arts Council now has to plan for expected worse cuts in the Comprehensive Spending Review in the autumn for 2011-2014, Forgan said.
Other savings have been made on a public engagement programme, audience development and partnership working with local authorities.
Meanwhile, DCMS has scrapped the planned Stonehenge Visitor Centre to save £17m, the BFI Southbank film centre (£45m), the theatre ticket scheme A Night Less ordinary (£100,000), and Find Your Talent (£2m).
