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.