Wadley’s in
Veronica Wadley has been appointed chair of Arts Council London by the Mayor, Boris Johnson. Pause for the shock of this news to subside.
To rehearse the story, Wadley was the editor of the Evening Standard (which reported her success on Thursday’s front page with ‘Top arts job for “crony” Wadley’) at the time of Boris Johnson’s election in 2008 and was his implacable champion to the point of some threatening to take the paper to the Press Complaints Commission. Last summer she applied to be the new London arts chair and, though a shortlisting committee discarded her, Johnson, in whose gift the appointment is subject to government approval, put her name forward. The then culture secretary, Ben Bradshaw, wouldn’t sanction it, saying it broke the Nolan Rules on political interference in public appointments; Johnson fumed and darkly muttered that he would leave the post unfilled until after the general election, and so it has happened. In the meantime a huge row erupted, greatly to the embarrassment of the national ACE chair Liz Forgan, and it was agreed that a new selection procedure would be devised, excluding Johnson, and Wadley would have to reapply. She did, and despite an open letter on Tuesday from The Guardian’s Dave Hill calling on David Cameron and Nick Clegg to intervene in the interests of non-croneyism, Jeremy Hunt has confirmed her appointment. Also in the meantime, Wadley has been busy visiting London arts organisations and creating a favourable impression, as well as declaring in the Spectator that arts organisations need to ‘monetise assets’ and warning ‘subsidy junkies take note’. There have been carefully worded welcome messages from Liz Forgan (‘our London and national councils are finally at full strength, which is excellent news’), Julia Peyton-Jones (‘a fresh eye to the work of Arts Council London’), Nick Hytner (‘She is enthusiastic, perspicacious and informed’) and Colin Tweedy (‘…good for our cultural partners and good for our commercial partners’).
But how much power does the chair of Arts Council London actually have? Her council is effectively an advisory body for the executive director, the highly regarded Moira Sinclair, whose immediate boss is not Wadley but ACE chief executive Alan Davey. Wadley, along with all the other regional chairs, also gets a seat on the national Arts Council. It pays her £6,400 a year for up to 30 days’ work, but it also gives her automatic entrée into the cultural salons and arts powerhouses of the capital, places where her opinions will be heard, noted and given currency with decision-makers. The story of Veronica Wadley, cultural mover and shaker, starts here,
The 1985 show
Hunt’s decision to impose a 4% cut on the Arts Council instead of the 3% everyone else in the DCMOS family is a warning shot across the bows that the arts are in for it. Talk of 5% cuts a year for the next three years are leaving national companies gloomy, never mind the smaller fry. One ceo of a national institution and as diplomatic an arts mandarin as they come, tells me bleakly ‘It would take us back to 1985’.
Bradshaw’s guide
And while the ‘Beware forest fire’ signs have been going up, where was HM Opposition? I called the former culture secretary and current Labour shadow for a comment only to get an answering machine message. Two days later, with deadlines long past and the stories already soaking up chip fat, an email arrives: ‘I am very concerned about the potential impact of these in-year cuts on our arts and cultural life. But I fear much worse to come. The Liberal Democrats seem to have meekly caved in during the coalition negotiations and abandoned their pre election commitment to protect spending on arts and culture’. I offer it now because you won’t have seen it anywhere
