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.

Hammered and humiliated in the government’s spending review, reduced to a laughing stock by the House of Commons culture committee, Liz Forgan and Alan Davey are bustling around trying to save their self-worth in the only way they know – behind a mountain of otiose paper.
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.

Hammered and humiliated in the government’s spending review, reduced to a laughing stock by the House of Commons culture committee, Liz Forgan and Alan Davey are bustling around trying to save their self-worth in the only way they know – behind a mountain of otiose paper.
Save the forests, ACE, and start working on a real plan for the next 12 months.