Arts Council names new execution date
NewsArts Council England has been given permission by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to announced the next three years’ worth of funding allocations.
They will do so, we understand, on Friday November 4.
Eve of the date when the pro-European Guy Fawkes aimed to blow up Parliament.
The greatest anxiety about the new allocations is being felt in London, Manchester and Cardiff. Welsh National Opera is notionally funded by Arts Council Wales but can only survive by touring England with subsidy from London. That may be about to stop.
Stand by for a bonfire of certain vanities.
Come back ‘pro European’ (sic) Guy Fawkes, all is forgiven.
There is a sense of panic from DCMS, with massive cuts to the grant-in-aid budget now being mooted.
Complex negotiation was required to agree 4 November: Darren eventually won the day with the argument that organisations need time to plan given that the new portfolio is due to come into effect from April, but we will offer one-year funding commitments only. More organisations will need to leave the portfolio from 2024 to avoid year-by-year salami slicing.
Given the scale of the potential cuts all options are on the table, and Let’s Create is largely dead in the water with the focus now on salvaging what we can of the sector. It is likely that all NPOs which remain in the Portfolio will have their grants cut by 5%-10% from April. There is scrutiny of duplication between five Arts Council and BBC funded orchestras in the North West, and we are scoping potential for a major regional opera company to leave the portfolio; provision could be replicated by requiring a national touring company which has applied to move out of London to have a regular presence in the city in question. It had already been agreed that fewer London-based opera houses, dance companies and symphony orchestras would remain in the portfolio from 2023. There is pressure from DCMS to retain Welsh National Opera in the portfolio owing to the need to strengthen the union.
There is a feeling of deep gloom among colleagues. We are doing our best in impossible circumstances and we understand the impact which all this is going to have on the sector.
May thanks for this update. I’m hearing that much is still up for grabs and that there is hand-to-hand fighting in some trenches. The choice is between a 10% meat-slicer across the board or a bold cull of underperformers, starting with ENO. Not an easy choice.
Surely bigger savings could be obtained by looking at military procurement, and the Ajax programme in particular. The figures are huge.
I’m not taking an anti-military stance, just anti-waste.
And I’d still like to know why BBC orchestras appear to be ring-fenced.