Sticky reactions to Arts Council fudge
NewsRoyal Opera House Covent Garden: We learned today that our core Arts Council England grant will be cut by 9%, reducing from £24,471,000 to £22,268,584 per annum, with effect from April 2023.
We are grateful to Arts Council England (ACE) for their continued financial support at such a critical time for the UK’s theatre industry and the wider economy. We support the wish to invest in the arts across the country, and warmly welcome all new entrants to ACE’s national portfolio. Nonetheless, we face significant financial challenges going forward, alongside our colleagues in the sector: sharply increased energy costs, rising inflation in material costs, and suppressed box office revenue as tourism recovers from the pandemic. This grant offer equates to a real terms cut of around £4.7m (19%) to our core funding, and comes on top of the 10% real terms cut we have experienced since 2017/18.
Chineke Foundation: We are thrilled to announce that today Chineke! Foundation’s bid to become a National Portfolio Organisation has been accepted. This will enable Chineke! to build on seven years of supporting and empowering Black and ethically diverse musicians and composers in classical music. It is a testament to the tireless work of so many players, trustees, team members, and the vision of our Founder and Artistic Director Chi-chi Nwanoku CBE. We send our best wishes to all organisations hearing the outcomes of their bids today.
London Philharmonic: We’re proud to be part of Arts Council England portfolio. It means we can keep creating magical moments, working with communities across our regional residencies, inspiring the next generation, supporting artists from under-represented backgrounds and simply sharing the wonder of music.
We will consider how the settlement affects our future plans but it is clear that these are challenging times for everyone. We’ll continue to offer tickets from £14 to enable us to continue sharing the wonder of music as widely as possible.
Liverpool Philharmonic: Liverpool Philharmonic is very grateful to Arts Council England for the funding awarded to the organisation as part of the 2023-26 Investment Programme. This funding enables Liverpool Philharmonic to continue its mission to enhance and transform lives through the work of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, our broad and diverse concert programme, and an extensive learning programme, including Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Company.
We are proud to be a key organisation in the world class cultural sector supported by Arts Council England, and to play our full part in broadening the diversity, reach and impact of the arts right across this country.
National Opera Studio: We are delighted to announce that the National Opera Studio has been successful in retaining its status as an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation in the upcoming investment period 2023-26.
As a training organisation based in London, we are particularly aware of our National remit, and work hard to ensure that our opportunities and talent programmes reach across the country and that artists who train with us are representative of the diversity of the society in which we live. We are acutely aware of the pressures of this funding round and are grateful for the ongoing support.
Conductor Leo Hussain: Honestly, I’m alternating between desperate sadness and fucking fury thinking of dedicated, generous, brilliant artists who will lose their livelihood because of wilful cultural vandalism by the government. ENO is a world-class opera company.
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment: We are pleased that the Arts Council has included us as a National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) in its 2023-26 Investment Programme announced today. We are committed to putting this investment to work. We will do this by making great music accessible to as broad an audience as possible and creating social change through initiatives such as our residency at Acland Burghley School and becoming increasingly sustainable in our operations. These are challenging times for everyone and we remain confident in our future thanks to the generosity of all our supporters, partners and audiences.
BECTU, the creative workers union: ‘We are shocked and dismayed at the over £50 million worth of government cuts to London’s arts funding in today’s Arts Council England announcement. Bectu is deeply concerned about the impacts on our members at the Royal Opera House, National Theatre, Donmar Warehouse and Glyndebourne, and particularly those at the English National Opera who face the uncertainty of a move out of London.
‘The UK’s creative sector is world-leading and critical to our economic success. While we always welcome genuine investment in creative economies across the country, these short-sighted decisions are instead robbing Peter to pay Paul. Increasing regional access to arts and culture should not come at a devastating cost to the nationally significant institutions that London is home to, creating anxiety for their employees and for the thousands of freelancers who rely on them for work.
‘There are real, damaging consequences to these cuts; London-based venues that are already stretched will suffer in pursuit of a phoney levelling up agenda that in reality is merely shifting neglect from one area to another. Venue relocations and funding cuts at others will also have knock-on impacts on the city’s night time economy.
‘If the UK has an ambition to continue to be a leading cultural centre we must avoid politically motivated decisions that hinder rather than help support and underpin the fragile ecology of the cultural sector.
‘Bectu is calling for an urgent summit with impacted venues and the Mayor of London to discuss the consequences of these destructive cuts. We will be doing everything we can to support our members and advocate for them.’
National Football Museum: The National Football Museum is delighted to receive National Portfolio Organisation status, helping us deliver our Football Creates initiative. Huge thanks to Arts Council England for their support!
‘Thankyou ACE for kicking us in the teeth. We’re grateful for the footling scraps you in your great wisdom put our way’
Cringe-inducing.
Sarcasm – the lowest form of wit. Man up, Rob-boy
“This will enable Chineke! to build on seven years of supporting and empowering Black and ethically diverse musicians and composers in classical music.”
…by not performing the National Anthem. Embrace Double Standards.
It’s very important that the wealthiest sport in the world should receive public subsidy to have its own museum. It was also a given that public subsidy should be taken from some of the best to fund a diverse but deeply divisive, some might say, racist, company.
When I worked at ACE in the 90’s here were only three others plus me who had ever worked in theatre and no doubt the situation is similar now. Reducing grants whilst costs are sky rocketing is ridiculous, well done BECTU for speaking out.
Needs generous millionaires particularly in London to bail out ENO. Perhaps Rishi and his wife could start the crowd fund and get £15m???
When I have met him, Leo Hussain seemed such a nice man. Seems genuinely upset, and rightly so. Let’s see how ENO manage the transition to Mancy just to get their funding back, it might up costing them more (in many ways) than it’s worth. What happens when ‘levelling up’ ceases to be a thing once again in Govt consciousness or parlance and the cultural world is once more London-centric? Do they then hot foot it back to the dreary Coliseum, hoping that it hasn’t been taken over as a branch of Primark or by Mike Ashley.
Why has the sinking Southbank not been stripped of its portfolio? It is no longer an institution that offers anything of artistic value, merely a receiving house.
Jake has a point. The Southbank Centre is still set to receive nearly £18m of public subsidy. For what exactly? They are, as he says, almost entirely a receiving house, providing a space for others to promote their concerts (whilst creaming off a share of the box office take). If ACE had a bit more vision they might have considered a new funding model for the place: placing the subsidy where it would do most good, in the coffers of the resident orchestras.
This is a huge missed opportunity in my opinion.
Covid lockdowns + war with Russia + climate politics + enormous immigration = slashed budgets.
Time musicians and administrators get of out of their ridicolous bubble. I guess most of them have been or are pro all of this.
What does immigration have to do with it?
The BECTU union might want to have a chat with their colleagues in the rail unions currently making it difficult for the general public to add to the revenue streams of their members.
“Diversity” was the magic key that got you money or got you cut. It is a zero-sum game, traditionalists lost, diversity won.
Viewed from the US, you live by the state funding sword, you die by the state funding sword. In the free market, no way, no how, “diversity” communities themselves would’ve funded these “diversity” groups because such groups no way no how serve their real cultural artistic needs. In the free market, most tax payers, whose taxes go to the ACE, being middle class and white, would’ve given instead to the traditional groups.
Maybe Big Brother knows best and allocated resources for the greatest good for all of society.
Typical of an evidently right-wing American whom believes any state ‘subsidy’ to anything which contributes to human welfare and development is fundamentally wrong. Well, here in Europe (I live in Scotland where a substantial majority voted in favour of remaining in Europe), we have a different view of things. Health, unemployment, old age incomes, public transport – as well as the ‘arts’ – all receive consensual support from the state – it’s not a subsidy but a basic right. You’re welcome to your world of ‘private affluence and public squalor (JK Galbraith, no less).
And the Met is doing so well.
Wondering why ACE has kept the Opera Studio afloat, when they’ve trashed the whole opera structure nationwide? They’re turning what was “the arts” to a branch of social services. Serota and co. must go!
This publication is such a collection on right – wing supremacists! Norman it is so embarrassing for this country! You should be ashamed of yourself – you bring discredit to the world of music journalism! Robert Maycock – the founder of Classical Music magazine who helped so many of you get your first break would be turning in his grave!
Priti, I don’t know what planet you are living on. I was writing about music in national newspapers long before Robert, of blessed memory, became editor of CM. Apart from that, it’s good to hear from you.
What is obvious is that ‘levelling-up’ is nonsense. Organisations that already reach outside of London are hit by these cuts. Glyndebourne Festival is self-supporting – Touring which reaches far out into the hinter-lands of the UK not so and has been sliced.
The message being sent here is awful – an already overly-funded sport which attracts mass sponsorship and private money is being given cash because it has mass appeal. This is cultural vote-buying writ large.
And the ‘anti-London’ rhetoric continues apace – there is NOTHING WRONG with London! In fact, in demographic, cultural and transport terms, it is exactly what the rest of the country should be but we choose NOT to invest in public transport, in education, in bringing the average age down, in making sure people have high quality housing in the cities and not in remote rural locations where they prefer to while-away their hours watching Netflix instead of going to a gig, a concert, an opera.
“an already overly-funded sport which attracts mass sponsorship and private money is being given cash because it has mass appeal.”
Curious – what are you referring to?
Hang on, I thought Arts made more money in the UK than sport? Certainly that was the line peddled to argue opening up after the Lock downs. Both can’t be true.
The football museum. Penny just dropped.
‘an already overly-funded sport’
I’ve just made the huge mistake of getting sucked into a series of comments in The Spectator. I don’t know why I bothered and nearly lost the will to live.
The general feeling seems to be: ‘Why should I subsidise t’opera when my football club can stand on its own two feet. Let it die’. Similar wisdom is applied to the economics of pop concerts. Here’s a clue: Wembley Stadium seats 90,000, Emirates 61,000, Manchester Arena 21,000.
Inverted snobbery on steroids.
The Arts Council was obviously told to hit London and give the impression of benefitting Manchester. Whether it will succeed or not is another matter. The city is already in danger of being saddled with a white elephant in the form of a huge shed with a modest auditorium bolted onto the side. I’m still not clear how this will be used.
So far as ‘levelling-up’ is concerned, the Government hasn’t a clue. The Leeds leg of HS2 was cancelled around the time that
‘levelling-up’ was announced.
Priceless.
The world’s biggest collection of footballs and red Olivetti shirts!
Now that my favorite museum has closed for good (the vacuum cleaner museum near St Louis), I have time on my hands and might pop over and take a look.
What’s not to like?