Tory grandee will review Arts Council performance
NewsThe UK Government has named Dame Mary Archer to chair a performance review of Arts Council England and advise how it can find 5% more cuts in its budget.
She will also report on how ACE funds ‘ambitious projects of the highest quality’, something it has been notably remiss in doing in the past couple of years.
At least the review will be fragrant.
The cutters will be cut – err, efficiencies shall be found. Kill by the sword, die by the sword.
No doubt ‘fragrant Mary’ will find the ACE comes out smelling of roses.
So, another 5% cut coming down the tracks, following years of standstill funding. This surely means more impending doom and gloom for our opera and ballet companies, and orchestras.
The government should be INCREASING the Arts Council budget by at least 5% each year so that an expanding arts sector becomes integral to the economic growth both main parties say is their policy. The amount of extra money required to grow the arts is peanuts, in the greater scheme of things.
Interesting to note that Labour are not committing to “turning on the taps” and increasing arts funding, should they win power. Their Leader has said only that they will explore “new funding models”….
“Dame Mary Archer DBE started her career as a physical chemist and taught Chemistry at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities. She was chair of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for ten years and is currently chair of the Science Museum Group and Cambridge Early Music. She is President of the UK Solar Energy Society and the Guild of Church Musicians, a trustee of Britten Sinfonia and iCould, and a non-executive director of Hydrodec Group plc. In 2012, she was appointed DBE for services to the NHS.”
So some interest in music, at least.
Involved with Britten Sinfonia too, wonderful group who has their whole grant cut
I’ve never heard of this lady, but her husband is a piece of work, a second-rate novelist who did time for perjury. She doesn’t seem to know anything about the arts!