Unbelievable.
It’s the only word I can find to describe Alan Davey’s performance on the Today programme this morning.
The chief executive of Arts Council England has just ‘discovered’ that many of the companies receiving regular grants, the so-called RFOs, never actually applied for them.
Absolutely right. Maynard Keynes stipulated in 1945 that arts funding was to be ‘informal’ and the Arts Council existed to choose ventures and support those which had a ‘reasonable prospect of success’. This is foundation stuff. How is it possible that Davey has been chief executive for three years and does not know this?
And what point is there in making a National Theatre apply for its grant? Will any Arts Council ever dare to drop a national enterprise?
The gimmick comes with a ten-year strategy plan that was first sketched in 2007 and bears no relation to present reality.
Unbelievable, in both senses of the word. The ACE initiative makes you wonder whether they are living on the same planet as the rest of us. And Davey’s presentation was so tremulous, so lacking in personal credibility that no-one can possibly imagine why this man is still in his job, earning £191,000 after a £16,000 increase last year.
Unbelievable.
I’ve just heard that Arts Council England has rushed forward an important initiative from next week to tomorrow. The announcement is its ten-year strategy for arts funding in England, a work three years in preparation and – I am reliably informed – hardly changed to take in the strategic effects of deep cuts to the Council itself. What began as an altogether quixotic exercise in navel-gazing now has all the comic realism of Alice in Wonderland.
Save the forests, ACE, and start working on a real plan for the next 12 months.
I’ve just heard that Arts Council England has rushed forward an important initiative from next week to tomorrow. The announcement is its ten-year strategy for arts funding in England, a work three years in preparation and – I am reliably informed – hardly changed to take in the strategic effects of deep cuts to the Council itself. What began as an altogether quixotic exercise in navel-gazing now has all the comic realism of Alice in Wonderland.
Save the forests, ACE, and start working on a real plan for the next 12 months.
The first question I was asked at the HoC Committee for Culture, Media and Sport was, ‘what’s wrong with the Arts Council?’ Since the committee’s brief is to examine the funding of arts and heritage with particular reference to budget cuts, this was a leading question.
One MP in particular, Tom Watson (Labour), had formed a dim view of the ACE during its chief executive Alan Davey’s testimony two weeks ago. Another, Louise Bagshawe (Con), announced that Mr Watson had ‘filletted’ the ACE during their session.
So the committee as a whole was receptive to criticism from Tiffany Jenkins of the Institute of Ideas, David Lee of Jackdaw magazine and myself. And I think we gave them the specifics required. I discussed the huge budgets lavished on non-arts social and political ventures; Alan condemned the unaccountable preference for one contemporary style over others; and Tiffany, naturally an ACE supporter, acknowledged its weak leadership and loss of direction.
Various reforms were proposed, all of us rejecting outright abolition. It will be interesting to see which of our ideas will appear in the final report.
Here is a video of the session that has just appeared online. My contribution begins at 12:08
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=6845
The first question I was asked at the HoC Committee for Culture, Media and Sport was, ‘what’s wrong with the Arts Council?’ Since the committee’s brief is to examine the funding of arts and heritage with particular reference to budget cuts, this was a leading question.
One MP in particular, Tom Watson (Labour), had formed a dim view of the ACE during its chief executive Alan Davey’s testimony two weeks ago. Another, Louise Bagshawe (Con), announced that Mr Watson had ‘filletted’ the ACE during their session.
So the committee as a whole was receptive to criticism from Tiffany Jenkins of the Institute of Ideas, David Lee of Jackdaw magazine and myself. And I think we gave them the specifics required. I discussed the huge budgets lavished on non-arts social and political ventures; Alan condemned the unaccountable preference for one contemporary style over others; and Tiffany, naturally an ACE supporter, acknowledged its weak leadership and loss of direction.
Various reforms were proposed, all of us rejecting outright abolition. It will be interesting to see which of our ideas will appear in the final report.
Here is a video of the session that has just appeared online. My contribution begins at 12:08
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=6845
If you want to hear the classical charts wherever you go, the BBC will provide them on a podcast from tomorrow. I’m not sure it’s going to change many lives, but at least it tells you what music is going into the shops and at what speed it is leaving.
Here’s the announcement:
Hello –
I’m writing to alert you to an exciting event in Radio 3 history and a first for BBC Audio and Music.
Tomorrow morning, when Naomi Anderson presses the button, the first Breakfast Show Specialist Classical Music Podcast will be unleashed.
The podcast is taken directly from our regular Tuesday morning exploration of the newly released Specialist Classical Chart. It’s basically the 0800-0830 segment of the show, when each week you can hear chart details and some of the new entries, fast movers and often the number one.
What’s really special about this podcast is that, after months of negotiation and collaboration, we’ve secured for our listeners the opportunity to hear not just a few seconds of music but whole movements or works excerpted from CDs appearing in the chart. (We can include up to 9 minutes from any individual CD). This gives our audience a chance to sample and re-sample CDs as they keep themselves informed and make their spending decisions.
It starts tomorrow, Tuesday, and will be available around midday every successive Tuesday, initially for a 6-month trial period.
You can download individual episodes from here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3chart
Or you can subscribe to the weekly thing through iTunes, Yahoo, Zune, Google Reader, Zencast. Whichever way you do it, do it. And please tell your friends, if you have any. If not, complete strangers are a good option.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/10_october/29/podcast.shtml
If you want to hear the classical charts wherever you go, the BBC will provide them on a podcast from tomorrow. I’m not sure it’s going to change many lives, but at least it tells you what music is going into the shops and at what speed it is leaving.
Here’s the announcement:
Hello –
I’m writing to alert you to an exciting event in Radio 3 history and a first for BBC Audio and Music.
Tomorrow morning, when Naomi Anderson presses the button, the first Breakfast Show Specialist Classical Music Podcast will be unleashed.
The podcast is taken directly from our regular Tuesday morning exploration of the newly released Specialist Classical Chart. It’s basically the 0800-0830 segment of the show, when each week you can hear chart details and some of the new entries, fast movers and often the number one.
What’s really special about this podcast is that, after months of negotiation and collaboration, we’ve secured for our listeners the opportunity to hear not just a few seconds of music but whole movements or works excerpted from CDs appearing in the chart. (We can include up to 9 minutes from any individual CD). This gives our audience a chance to sample and re-sample CDs as they keep themselves informed and make their spending decisions.
It starts tomorrow, Tuesday, and will be available around midday every successive Tuesday, initially for a 6-month trial period.
You can download individual episodes from here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3chart
Or you can subscribe to the weekly thing through iTunes, Yahoo, Zune, Google Reader, Zencast. Whichever way you do it, do it. And please tell your friends, if you have any. If not, complete strangers are a good option.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/10_october/29/podcast.shtml
An arts foundation asked me to summarise the state of the art in the throes of its latest turmoil. I gave brisk answers to brief questions, but still surprised myself at my own general optimism that classical music will emerge stronger from recession and that the new wave of talent will generate its own energy. You can read the interview here: http://www.snapshotsfoundation.com/articles/36-norman-lebrecht-interview
Meantime, things are getting tough in Spain and Portugal. The manager of Porto’s beautiful and adventurous Casa da Musica tells me he’s preparing for a 19.6 percent budget cut. I see that Michael Kaiser is impressed by the arts minister, but the government is fragile and all outcomes are uncertain.
In Spain, the symphony orchestra in Seville is suffering a 40 percent cut and voices are being raised against the continued state funding for Daniel Barenboim’s East-West Diwan while resident arts ensembles are exposed to the full blast of post-bankcrash retrenchment.
An arts foundation asked me to summarise the state of the art in the throes of its latest turmoil. I gave brisk answers to brief questions, but still surprised myself at my own general optimism that classical music will emerge stronger from recession and that the new wave of talent will generate its own energy. You can read the interview here: http://www.snapshotsfoundation.com/articles/36-norman-lebrecht-interview
Meantime, things are getting tough in Spain and Portugal. The manager of Porto’s beautiful and adventurous Casa da Musica tells me he’s preparing for a 19.6 percent budget cut. I see that Michael Kaiser is impressed by the arts minister, but the government is fragile and all outcomes are uncertain.
In Spain, the symphony orchestra in Seville is suffering a 40 percent cut and voices are being raised against the continued state funding for Daniel Barenboim’s East-West Diwan while resident arts ensembles are exposed to the full blast of post-bankcrash retrenchment.
Harry Mulisch, who has died in Amsterdam aged 83, never escaped the shadow of German occupation in the Second World War. Growing up with a father who collaborated with the Gestapo was a guilt that pervaded his fiction in ways ever more painful and ambivalent.
The Assault, his best-known novel and the first I read, follows the ruined adult life of Anton who, as a boy, witnessed a German retaliation on civilians for the murder of a quisling.
Siegrfried, even more dangerous, cuts to the question of why Germans felt the urge to follow Hitler. Mulisch had the great skill of creating situations that absolved him of polemic. The narrator never rants. Everything flows from the central character and the reader is left with the sensation of going places he or she has never been before.
Mulisch is a unique writer, still too little known in English translation.
Harry Mulisch, who has died in Amsterdam aged 83, never escaped the shadow of German occupation in the Second World War. Growing up with a father who collaborated with the Gestapo was a guilt that pervaded his fiction in ways ever more painful and ambivalent.
The Assault, his best-known novel and the first I read, follows the ruined adult life of Anton who, as a boy, witnessed a German retaliation on civilians for the murder of a quisling.
Siegrfried, even more dangerous, cuts to the question of why Germans felt the urge to follow Hitler. Mulisch had the great skill of creating situations that absolved him of polemic. The narrator never rants. Everything flows from the central character and the reader is left with the sensation of going places he or she has never been before.
Mulisch is a unique writer, still too little known in English translation.
