Birmingham is shamed for largest-ever arts cut
NewsThe withdrawal of council funding next year from all arts ventures in Birmingham, starting with the orchestra and opera company, is being correctly described in UK media as the biggest blow ever administered to culture by a city council.
Birmingham, which once aspired to second-city status, has fallen far behind Manchester in its cultural ambitions.
An international orchestra that challenged London for primacy in the 1990s has been left scrapping for subsidence funds.
This is a national tragedy in the making. Shakespeare, who lived nearby, would have known how to handle it.
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Off-topic: how are these marketing ads getting through your screening? Second one in a couple weeks. Hint: if the user name contains a link to a dental business website, it’s not about the arts in Birmingham.
You cannot shame the shameless… and shameless sociopaths tend to climb management ladders much more aggressively than people with empathy, so… yeah. This is what you end up with.
I don’t know how we fix this, sorry.
Seems that many British art organisations are currently scrapping for subsidence funds.
On the other hand, the UK has got two big, shiny aircraft carriers to hold up the image of being “ruling the waves”. (OK, they lack the required number of airplanes, and they lack decent reliability, and some even say they lack a sensible purpose to start with — but still. Reminiscences of the olde glory, “where the sun never sets” and all that.)
One can’t spend the same money twice.
Priorities…
When Putin sends his warplanes to the British Isles I’d rather count on the shiny aircraft carriers than the musicians of the orchestra of the city of Birmingham.
Unfortunately, you won’t have either.
Orchestras exist to improve lives, aircraft carriers exist to destroy them.
You say that, but Louis Fremaux fought in the French Resistance and later fought a member of the French Foreign Legion – the toughest of the tough. He was decorated for his courage on active service in Algeria and Indochina.
Know who broke him? The players of the CBSO.
Typo, sorry – he fought *as* a member of the French Foreign Legion.
Obviously the results will vary by venue, but perhaps it may be good in the long-run for venues to be freed of government control and manipulation!
The removal of public funds from the arts and culture makes them elitist. Having arts and culture is, as JM Keynes said when he set up the Arts Council to remove politics from arts funding, is a sign of a civilised society.
Even a cursory survey of European history in the 20th century would disabuse anyone of the notion that lavish public expenditure on the arts leads to a civilized society. Unless you’re someone who thinks European history began in 1945.
There’s a very good article in The Critic today about this, headed “Who’s Ready for the Equality Levy”. In essence, Birmingham Council is bankrupt because of historic equal pay claims under the “equal value” rule. That rule says that if you have a group of mostly female workers (say cleaners) and mostly male workers (say, refuse collectors) whose work is of “equal value”, they must be paid the same.
The whole idea is a nonsense of course. How do you determine “equal value”?
Anyway, the result is that the Council is bankrupt and has serious restrictions on what it can spend. Taxes will go up by a lot. The same thing is going to happen to councils across the country.
I think you are right. Cuts will hit every council. Not one will escape the cuts. It all has a knock-on effect. I fear Opera North will be effected when people will have to pay more Council Tax, and then te dreadful cost of living crisis that has far from gone away. It all affects audience attendances too.
Yes, the mindless historic ‘equal value’ policy has caused Birmingham to sink into bankruptcy. Very sad.
Thanks to some cunning negotiations by the unions with Birmingham City Council the refuse collectors earn a similar salary to university-educated lawyers in the Council’s Legal Services Department.
That is not the truth. Dustman are part of the problem but they don’t earn anywhere near that much.
My source is a lawyer at Birmingham City Council. Perhaps it includes bin man overtime. I know in 2011 they could earn £45,000 a year with overtime, but I think the Council later put a stop to that.
Can’t the king step in? After all, he plays the cello.
I think he has other things on his mind.
I wouldn’t say it challenged London for primacy in the 1990s. More accurate to say that it left London trailing in the dust.
The International season combined with the CBSO was the finest in the country at that time. The Barbican and RFH were very good as well but the actual concert hall and the fact that the international season was so good at that time made Birmingham very special indeed for anyone interested in classical music. The fare at Birmingham Hippodrome was not to be sniffed at either – WNO and BRB.
“…scrapping for subsidence funds.”
I think you mean SUBSISTENCE funds. If there’s subsidence at Symphony Hall, a bad situation has become even worse.
This is appalling news, but our philistine government must be delighted.
I don’t think the government is delighted at all.
That red (lower case) “symphony hall” sign in front of Birmingham’s building reminds me of the revolving (at least originally, if not still today) “Scotland Yard” sign in London.
By contrast, “Royal Festival Hall” atop the building next to the Thames isn’t as much a “what were they thinking?,” although it’s still kind of “uh, er.”
Places like Sydney’s opera house from the 1970s or Paris’s opera house built in the 1800s don’t have big signage out front. But certain Brits for the past 50-60 years, for whatever reason, have had a fondness for grocery-store-type signs.
Guessing you’re a Manc? We will always be the second city and you will always resent that despite your natural sense of self importance. If you take a step back, you’ll realise that this government has stripped all councils of their budgets over the last 13 years. Birmingham will be the first of many to fall, being the largest local authority in Europe (hear that Manc?)
This will be a story repeated many times over and each times city councils will be blamed when central government are really at fault.
So shame on you. Birmingham is an incredible city, and it’s self deprecating people will ensure it remains that way. Before you take cheap shots, think…you could be next.
(I’m assuming that this wasn’t a spoof comment… if it was, then apologies for missing the joke and taking it literally!)
1. “Manc”. I believe you will find that Norman Lebrecht is from London. Unless you were referring to some other anonymous and undercover nefarious “Manc” hiding out in this comment section, just to troll you?
2. It’s great to be proud of one’s city. You are quite right, Birmingham is the second largest city in the UK by population. However, I am afraid that you need a reality check in terms of Birmingham’s status in the eyes of the rest of the UK, and Europe. I am neither from Birmingham or Manchester, indeed not from the UK. Rightly or wrongly, when non-UK people think of British cities, they think London – Manchester – Liverpool first. London is an amazing global city, Manchester has Man U, Liverpool has The Beatles. The moniker “second city” has more factors than simply population numbers and I’m sorry to spell it out for you but in terms of public perception, Birmingham is simply not cutting it.
To hone in on classical music though, Birmingham has the amazing Symphony Hall and the excellent CBSO, jewels in the artistic crown for those who do understand and appreciate these things. Some years ago, if you discussed British orchestras with someone in, say, Germany, CBSO would have been mentioned in the same breath as LSO. I think it is absolutely fair to say that in the 90s, CBSO were challenging London orchestras for primacy, and this makes what is happening with the council funding even more sad and distressing. I am sure that this has been flagged for some time amidst CBSO planning; as others have pointed out, in £ terms relative to the total budget, it’s not Armageddon in itself. But the optics are appalling.
Berlin, Amsterdam, Boston, Prague, London, Sydney… great cities have great orchestras. I know I have given “headline” examples for effect, but for decades, it looked as though CBSO (and by extension, the Birmingham City Council) was doing all the right things to move themselves rapidly up the leaderboard and join that list. It’s just so sad what is happening now.
When around 80% of local council spending is mandated by government to be spent on social care (which ought to be part of national healthcare spending), there is (even without the equal pay scandal in Birmingham) precious little to cover the cost of all other council expenditure. Birmingham is the worst hit so far, but several other councils are already on the verge of bankruptcy or having to find cuts in the tens of millions. This has got to change.
When you consider the reports relating to Birmingham hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2022, you can see they were sleepwalking into financial disaster overall:
BCC Ignoring advice NOT to host the games:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/birmingham-council-bankrupt-commonwealth-games-b2406968.html ,
£25m shortfall in funding in Jan 22:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-60059296 ,
and in particular the Government’s post-games report: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/birmingham-2022-contributes-870-million-to-uk-economy .
The latter has the following quotes from
Cllr Ian Ward, then Leader of Birmingham City Council:
“As this report makes clear, the Birmingham Commonwealth Games provided a huge and timely boost for Birmingham, the West Midlands and the United Kingdom.
The Games were just the start of Birmingham’s Golden Decade of Opportunity, providing a springboard for further success, and these findings underline why the bold decision by the council to lead the bid for the Games was the right one.”
I wonder what he’s thinking now? I don’t think he’s in post any longer.
The result of Socialist overspending, woke DEI wastage and Tory philistinism.
To get this in proportion, it costs roughly £11m pa to run the CBSO and the Birmingham City Council subsidy has been around £600k pa, so the cut is important, but (hopefully) not fatal. And everyone connected with the orchestra has seen this cut coming for some time.
I love the CBSO and hear it as often as I can, but feel even more more sympathy for the many neighbourhood arts organisations in the City where Council funding is fundamental to their existence. As they too face a 100% cut.