UK Budget: The arts facts
NewsAs Jeremy Hunt was delivering today’s pre-election budget, describing a boom in the film and music industries, Nottingham City Council signed off a 100% cut to its arts grants. Nottingham Playhouse, part of the backbone of British theatre, warned it would have to reconsider all activity in the coming year.
A few hours earlier, Birmingham City Council authorised a two-step abolition of arts subsidies. The chief losers will be the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Birmingham Opera. Boom, what boom?
What Jeremy Hunt needed to know was that for Britain to profit from film and pop music it needs a talent-training infrastructure of theatres and orchestras of the kind that fostered Swinging London in the 1960s and Cool Britannia of the 1990s. In the present climate, with theatres and orchestras facing cutbacks and closure, any film and rock revival can only be ephemeral.
The permanent extension of higher rates of creative industry tax reliefs will make a very material difference to orchestras, opera and ballet companies, theatres and some museums. Just to give credit where it’s due…
If the government insisted musicians were PAID when their music is streamed the arts wouldn’t be in this decline….
OK the tax cuts for the arts are good but did anyone notice that there was a £26m grant for the LONDON based National Theatre (I think it was to renew its stage) What about the rest of the country!!!