MLA gives cash back to redeploy before year end

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council has underspent the £50m Renaissance budget for this year by £4.8m, and has already handed the money back to DCMS.

But the underspend is a deliberate ploy to free up money caught in the Hub system, said MLA chief executive Roy Clare. Rather than depriving museums of much needed cash, he said the returned money was the result of an intentional policy change, “a pragmatic and responsible reallocation of public funds”.

The money is intended for the 47 museums within the nine hubs of the Renaissance in the Regions scheme in England. “We distributed the funds via the hubs last year and found at the end of the fiscal year that there was an underspend which was lost. We then made a new spending agreement with the funds being paid in retrospect rather than advance, and directly to the museums so the MLA had better control.

“The money was not going to be spent in the Hubs and we have taken the decision to give the money back to DCMS so that some of it has already been reallocated to other projects that badly needed it” he said. “If we had not done that, the money would have been returned to the Treasury and lost to the cultural sector”.

Since the money was returned to the government, DCMS has pledged an extra £100,000 to the Jewish Museum, which reopens in Camden next month. The Art Fund winning Wedgwood Museum has also been given an extra £200,000. DCMS said that it would not be known where the money had gone until the department’s summer statement.

Previously, MLA had been allowed to carry underspends over from one financial year to the next, but a tightening of the rules covering what is known in Whitehall as “EYF” – end year flexibility – by the Treasury because of the recession had stopped the practice.

80m handed out in penultimate recession awards
The Leicester Theatre Trust, which runs The Curve, opened 18 months ago at a cost of £61m, has got the largest award in the penultimate Arts Council Sustain awards, with £1.03m over the next two years to help the deal with cash flow probl,ms and maikntain quality dstandards after losses in box office and ghrants fropm tirsts and foundastions.

The Roundhouse in London, which re-opened in 2006 after a £30m refurbishment and redevelopment, is awarded £800.000.

Sustain was set up last year by ACE with lottery money to provide a quick and strategic response for arts organisations effected by the economic downturn, and ensure that artistic excellence does not decline. It was closed for new applications in October.

The seventh awards are worth around £8 million, with 27 arts organisations getting grants ranging down to £77,000. It brings the total handed out so far to £41m, and there are 13 more applications to be considered, asking for a total of £6m.

Other institutions and venues which have benefited this time include the Brighton Dome (£611,700); Nottingham Contemporary (£594,000); • Whitechapel Gallery, (£480,000); Royal Court Theatre (£454,000); West Yorkshire Playhouse (£424,710); Hall for Cornwall (£416,500); City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (£388,000), which has been hit by a lack of development and touring income; the Norfolk and Norwich Festival (£330,00); Derby Quad (£260,000); FACT, Liverpool (£233,500); Warwick Arts Centre (£215,000); Customs House Trust, South Shields (£179,600); Seven Stories, Newcastle upon Tyne (£175,000); Future Everything CIC, Manchester (£150,000); the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra (£150,000); the Lake District Summer Music (£140,000); the Britten Sinfonia (£126,000); the Academy of Ancient Music (£120,000); Milap Festival Trust, Liverpool (£120,000); and the National Centre for Early Music (£120,000); Forma, London (109,800); First Movement, Rowsley (£99,761); TIPP, Manchester (£81,450); Travelling Light Theatre Company, Bristol (£79,439); Natural Theatre Company, Bath (£77,000).

‘Sustain has been crucial in helping over 130 arts organisations weather the effects of the recession,’ said ACE chief executive Alan Davey. ‘It’s been a vital interim support, but now is the time to look to the next challenges and ensure that the right conditions are created to maintain artistic excellence in the long-term.

‘We’re determined to build on the successes of recent years to make sure arts organisations can continue to produce groundbreaking work and play a major role in our collective economic future.’

Just over £41 million has now been invested through Sustain, and there are a remaining 13 applications requesting a further £6 million still under consideration. The Arts Council announced in November that they would be committing additional Lottery funds for the Sustain programme so that all remaining applications are assessed fairly against criteria.

Ruth Mackenzie, currently cultural policy adviser at DCMS, is to be the £130,000-a-year director of the Cultural Olympiad.

Reporting to the chair of the Cultural Olympiad committee, Tony Hall, she becomes the “ringmaster” for the cultural Olympics called for a year ago by outgoing ACE chair Sir Christopher Frayling.

Four artistic advisers have also been appointed: Sir Brian McMaster, former director of the Einburgh Festival and author of the DCMS report on excellence in the arts of 2008; Alex Poots, director of the Manchester International Festival (of which Mackenzie was general director); Martin Duncan, with whom she was co-director of the Chichester Festival Theatre; and Craig Hassall, managing director of English National Ballet who was responsible for branding for the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

” Our first task will be to do an audit of the existing plans and make recommendations to the board on the vision and timetable for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad” she said. “We aim to announce our initial plans in a few months’ time”. In fact, the first announcements are expected as soon as March.

The delay in the appointment is thought to have been due to a combination of disagreement about the salary – Tony Hall told AI last month that the originally proposed pay was too low – and some opposition on the main London Olympic Committee for the Olympic Games.

State of the Arts conference
Message of optimism to arts, despite promises of cuts from Tories and Labour

Both the current culture secretary and, many believe, the next one warned of cuts to the arts subsidy post-election at the recent Royal Society of Arts/Arts Council conference State of the Arts, though the news was given in an atmosphere of enthusiasm conjured by the ACE chairman Liz Forgan.

“After repeating the message that the arts are useful, productive and economic superfoods, it is finally beginning to get through out there” she said, “but it will need to be made again and again.

“We have a great case to make for sustained investment and we must make it or all we are worth… We have good numbers to talk about and they are large and growing every year faster than any other sector.”

But she found herself clashing the Tory spokesman, Jeremy Hunt, over ACE’s future.

“We think administrative costs are far too high” singling out the Heritage Lottery Fund and ACE which he said were spending 13% and 11% of their subsidy on administration. A Conservative government would not abolish the Arts Council, but it would have to be “leaner, though not meaner”.

But Forgan challenged Hunt’s his figures. “We are heading for 6% now, and 5% later this year” she said. Later, Carole Souter, chief executive of HLF, said their administrative spending was now down to 6.5% of income.

And his claims that the money coming to the arts from lottery and subsidy because of diversions of lottery finding, particularly to the Olympics, was now less than in 1997 was refuted by Ben Bradshaw, the culture secretary. “He is completely wrong” he responded. “We have just had the most successful decade in the arts when the cultural economy has grown at twice the rate of the Gross National Product, greatly promising for the future”.

Hunt set out Conservative arts policy, promising a “golden age” for the arts, much like Tony Blair had done in 2007.

New was the pledge to encourage arts organisation to establish endowments funding by private investment along American lines, and in return a Conservative government would offer five year funding deals instead of the present three years.

A Cameron government would return to the original five good causes as recipients of lottery funding, with the arts getting a 20% share which could mean £50m a year more; there would be more generous arrangements for the acceptance of works of art by the nation in lieu inheritance tax, and an improvement of Gift Aid to encourage a US-style philanthropy – ‘It would be good for society if giving were a cultural norm’ he said - though he could not promise more direct tax breaks.

Despite Hunt saying that he could not promise to maintain arts funding, Liz Forgan underlined her message of optimism. “Let me say in the clearest possible terms to government and to our other partners: we can’t expect excellence to continue I our creative life without sustained public investment” she told the 500 delegates.

“There is no reason why we cannot come through the troubles economic times with these achievements intact, but we need to keep reinventing what we do, being as imaginative in the way we organise the arts as artists are in creating work.”

The Arts Council has appointed 152 assessors, the “peers” that will scrutinise the work of regularly funded organisations. There had been more than 1,100 applications.

The new assessors, on two year contracts, will report on music, literature, dance, visual arts, theatre and combined arts, including specialisms such as work for children and young people, culturally specific arts and disability-led arts. They will begin reporting next month, and another 148 will be appointed in the autumn to begin work in 2011.

Artistic assessments will feed into the Arts Council’s artistic evaluation of RFOs, providing a basis for informing the Arts Council’s funding decisions. The assessments will be shared with the arts organisations and may provide a useful context for organisations’ own decisions on artistic quality.

Further information about the Artistic Assessment scheme is available at www.artscouncil.org.uk/artistic-assessment.

The recession has forced private arts investment down by 7%, according to Arts & Business, including individual giving. And A&B chief executive Colin Tweedy has warned there is worse to come.

The figures announced this week for 2008/9 show a £31m slump from the previous year’s record overall high of £686m to £655m.

While business investment was already in decline last year, individual giving in 2007/8 had defied the trend and risen by 25%. A year later the graph has reversed its direction, heading down by 7% with a £19m drop from the record level of £382m to £363m.

All three private sectors have fallen, with business investment down 6% - a slowing decline on last year - and standing at £157 million, 24% of the overall private sector contribution.

Trusts and foundations, a sector which had been a reliable friend to arts organisations and had also continued on the up in the previous figures, have also lessened their contributions by 7%, down from £141m to £135m.

“We would like to be optimistic, but predict the worst is yet to come with 2010/11 being the low-point” Tweedy said. “But we must remember that despite the economic difficulties, the UK’s arts fundraisers have still secured close to £655 million from the private sector – which is a remarkable achievement. We must now give them every opportunity to maximise their skills and ideas.

“In this fiscal climate there is still enormous pressure on the arts. With much focus on public expenditure budgets, many are looking to the private sector to contribute more – we believe it can”. He said that businesses seeing attendances up on average by 12% will also see potential gain for them in targeting these markets and their future consumers.

‘New policies are the way forward’
Colin Tweedy and A&B are calling for three policy initiatives to stimulate private sector support for arts and culture:
1. New far-reaching incentive schemes to encourage businesses.
2. The training and knowledge to deepen a pro-enterprise and innovation culture throughout the arts.
3. New challenge funds to grow and inspire cultural philanthropy, which has huge potential for growth.

“Be clear” Tweedy said, “there is no magic bullet for cultural philanthropy. We need challenge fund programmes to motivate individuals; yet wider recognition and celebration of philanthropists; better use of existing and potentially new tax incentives (the extent to which Higher Rate Tax Paying donors are claiming the tax breaks due to them); a stronger provision of legacies; enhanced donor care and the training of the real skills to make the case for culture to potential donors. These are all part of any future growth.”

Education secretary Ed Balls has pledged £25,000 to introduce a “flexible family ticket” for museums. The new concessionary ticket is one of the recommendations in the new Kids in Museums Manifesto, and the announcement was made by Balls at the British Museum launch of the manifesto yesterday.

“The present two-plus-two concession whish is only available to a family of two adults and two children ignores the shape of the modern British family” said Dea Birkett, director of Kids in Museums. “It takes no account of single parent families and it is the lower income families that tend to miss out. The new flexible family ticket will take into account the different make-ups of families visiting museums and we think it will give a lead to all sorts of other public attractions that will follow suit”.

A “flexible family ticket watch” is to be set up by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and Kids in Museums whereby museums will report back on the needs and wishes of families visiting museums.

The flexible ticket is one of a number of surprising revelations in the manifesto, including the fact that museum visitors don’t want hands-on computer driven attractions any more, preferring traditional object displays.

“Visitors have said they don’t want unlimited hands-on any more, they can do all that at home now” said Birkett,. “What they want is to touch a real bone, they want to be tactile and get a sensual experience. Let’s face it, the technology is never going to be as good as Avatar. They want the thrill of the real”.

The manifesto also calls for pram parks in museums, adding to the convenience of mothers with small children and other visitors who often find large buggies impeding their access to objects, .

Visitors have called for flexible family tickets for paid exhibitions and institution, too, instead of the “two-and-two” system which only gives concessions for two adults with two children.

But ACE chair pulls up shadow chancellor on error

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has given the strongest indication yet of Conservative support for the arts if the party wins the general election next year.

“Right from the top our party, we are deeply committed to the British arts sector, and we want to see it flourish and thrive in the years ahead” he said at a conference at Tate Modern. “David Cameron is personally committed to the arts and culture”.

Beyond personal commitment he said there were deeper reasons for Tory commitment to the arts. “One of the core themes of the modern Conservative Party is social responsibility, and the belief that great things can happen when governments, charities, businesses and social enterprises work together” he said. “To me, the arts are a fantastic example of this.”

He said a Conservative government would end what he called “micromanagement” of the arts from Whitehall. “Instead of being defined as quangos, beholden to Treasury diktats, I want to see publicly owned arts bodies with the independence, confidence and incentives they need to focus on what they do best: being creative” he said.

However, as well as a commitment to continued government funding of the arts, the shadow chancellor delivered a warning that there would have to be restraint. A Tory government will insist on administrative cuts in subsidised arts organisations. The Arts Council spends 11% of its annual funding on administration, and the seven main funding distributors went £120m on admin. “This is completely unacceptable” Osborne said.

Nevertheless, he raised an eyebrow at the Arts Council by saying that “arts bodies are too often penalised by the Arts Council for attracting private sector sponsorship or philanthropy – we need to turn this situation on its head”.

Dame Liz Forgan, chairman of ACE, refuted the statement. “The opposite is actually true: we like private sector support, and Arts Council grants are often a lever to fundraising” she said. “I look forward to delivering the good news to the shadow chancellor.”

‘Memorandum of Understanding’ puts relationship on new footing

The British Council and Arts Council England have signed the first operative memorandum of understanding defining areas where the two councils can work together.

A framework has been established in which the two agencies can create and develop programmes together to “maximise the impact of both inbound and outbound showcase activities” the BC said.

They will collaborate on Unlimited, the Cultural Olympiad programme to include disabled artists in hcih the BC will support collaboration between foreign and UK artists, and Points of Culture, a continuation of the BC’s Artists Links Brazil programme, due to end next year but with a view to making new partnerships between Olympic host countries (Rio de Janeiro is to host the 2012 Games). They will also work together on music showcases

Leadership programmes operated by ACE, the Clore Foundation and the BC will host a joint symposium in 2010, and the two councils are together planning a London International Festival Symposium for 2012 as a platform for “a major public conversation on what it means to be an artist in the world today”.

And a Cultural Diplomacy Group has been set up under the MOU to bring together the four UK Arts Councils and Visiting Arts who will meet quarterly to look at how the UK’s culture can be presented on the world stage.

Culture Minister Margaret Hodge has announced the final list of cities which will compete for the title of UK City of Culture in 2013.
Fourteen bids have made the list. They include 11 single cities and one county, Cornwall. Portsmouth and Southampton’s joint bid is included, as is Ipswich’s bid with its surrounding districts in the Haven Gateway. They were whittled down from 33 bids although some bidders, like Aberdeen, subsequently withdrew:

The Full list is
Barnsley
Birmingham
Carlisle
Chichester
Cornwall
Derry
Durham
Hull
Ipswich and the Haven Gateway
Norwich
Portsmouth and Southampton
Sheffield
Southend
Swansea

The list of judges who will make up the Independent Advisory Panel, chaired by Phil Redmond, was also announced.They are:

. Derrick Anderson CBE
. Prof John Ashton CBE
. Anna Carragher
. Margaret Evans
. Lauren Laverne
. Rotha Johnston CBE
. Robert Palmer
. The judges will make their recommendations in the summer.