Before your brains get addled by the soundbite merchants from Government and Opposition, I’ve looked at one headline figure in the Budget and come to the conclusion that the arts are going to get off lightly – much more so than they would have done under Labour.

In the months before the last election, major arts instutitions were told to plan for succession ten percent cuts over three years – that’s 27.1 percent.

George Osborne spoke to day of cutting government spending by 25 percent over four years – that’s two percent less and over an extra 12 months.

Crunch this one whichever way you like, but it means the arts ought to get away with less pain under the LibCon coalition than under the feckless hand of Ben Bradshaw.

And if Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt decides to shake down the Arts Council, that measure would be cheered from Land’s End to Hadrian’s Wall. The southwest of England, a LibDem stronghold, has been cruelly neglected by the mandarins of the ACE.

 

Ahead of today’s austerity Budget the Arts Council of England, which distributes government subsidy across the lively arts, has cut £19 million from its purse. Half of the money is being dredged up from ‘reserves’, but arts organisations have been strimmed for the rest.

All 808 receipients of ACE grants receive a 0.5 percent reduction, spread evenly across the board. That means the Royal Opera House will lose £142,000 – that’s about two-third of its chief executive’s salary, not that he will be taking a pay cut – while your local ethnic arts centre may be down as little as £200. Fair’s fair, right? Everyone must have prizes, and everyone must share the pain in equal measure.

Wrong. The Arts Council was set up by Royal Charter 1945 to nurture creativity by supporting promising start-ups. It was designed to favour excellence and shun mediocrity. Its unstated motto was along the lines of: the best is the enemy of the good.

Today, it delivers equal shares and pain to everyone, regardless of merit. A London orchestra notorious for its minimal rehearsals receives the same grant as a world beater. A theatre in Hampstead that should never have been publicly rebuilt is pumped full of subsidy while little startups like the Broadway-storming Menier Chocolate Factory get nothing.

Given a challenging opportunity to make choices on where it should cut, the ACE simply shut its eyes and spread thin gruel across the board. This is institution that has loss all will and right to exist. Its chief executive, Alan Davey, a former Culture Department bureaucrat, said limply: ‘there really is no more to save.’  

Really? He could start with his own six-digit sinecure and work his way down through an eight-person executive that has proved itself incapable of making decisions, big or small.

The ACE is presently advertising a vacancy for an officer in Corporate Communications. Have they lost all semblance of plot? The ACE is a government welfare agency. It has no corporate function and it can barely communicate the time of day. It should be cutting itself.   

Ahead of today’s austerity Budget the Arts Council of England, which distributes government subsidy across the lively arts, has cut £19 million from its purse. Half of the money is being dredged up from ‘reserves’, but arts organisations have been strimmed for the rest.

All 808 receipients of ACE grants receive a 0.5 percent reduction, spread evenly across the board. That means the Royal Opera House will lose £142,000 – that’s about two-third of its chief executive’s salary, not that he will be taking a pay cut – while your local ethnic arts centre may be down as little as £200. Fair’s fair, right? Everyone must have prizes, and everyone must share the pain in equal measure.

Wrong. The Arts Council was set up by Royal Charter 1945 to nurture creativity by supporting promising start-ups. It was designed to favour excellence and shun mediocrity. Its unstated motto was along the lines of: the best is the enemy of the good.

Today, it delivers equal shares and pain to everyone, regardless of merit. A London orchestra notorious for its minimal rehearsals receives the same grant as a world beater. A theatre in Hampstead that should never have been publicly rebuilt is pumped full of subsidy while little startups like the Broadway-storming Menier Chocolate Factory get nothing.

Given a challenging opportunity to make choices on where it should cut, the ACE simply shut its eyes and spread thin gruel across the board. This is institution that has loss all will and right to exist. Its chief executive, Alan Davey, a former Culture Department bureaucrat, said limply: ‘there really is no more to save.’  

Really? He could start with his own six-digit sinecure and work his way down through an eight-person executive that has proved itself incapable of making decisions, big or small.

The ACE is presently advertising a vacancy for an officer in Corporate Communications. Have they lost all semblance of plot? The ACE is a government welfare agency. It has no corporate function and it can barely communicate the time of day. It should be cutting itself.