29 April 2008
We received a petition asking:
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to support the industry by joining the growing band of people who have no confidence in The Arts Council."
Details of Petition:
"Nearly 200 arts organisations, including 37 theatre companies, have been told they are to lose all revenue funding from Arts Council England, in the bloodiest cull in ACE’s 61-year history. The move to axe subsidy completely from 195 organisations, for most from April 2008, is leading to threats of closure and redundancies across the country. Not only will this deprive many areas of any cultural output but also ghettoise diversity and create a more divided and less integrated society when this public money should be doing the opposite."
Read the Government’s response
It is a long standing principle that the Arts Council operates at arm’s length from the Government and levels of funding for individual arts organisations are entirely for them. It is exactly this arm’s length principle that ensures that the arts in this country are not subject to political interference.
Arts Council England wrote to arts organisations in December 2007 about its future funding plans and received 126 letters from those organisations in response. Following discussions with the organisations and further deliberation, Arts Council England revised its funding proposals for 17 organisations at the beginning of February 2008 announced its funding plans for the next 3 years, which included bringing over 80 new organisations into the portfolio.
The arts change and grow and it is right that the Arts Council’s regularly funded portfolio should reflect this, and should make room for new ideas, new people and new talent to develop and succeed. The Government would not want them simply to fund the same organisations year after year, at the same levels.
Supporting excellence and innovation were central themes in Sir Brian McMaster’s recent review ‘Supporting Excellence in the Arts‘, which looked at strategic issues of how to best support artistic excellence. The Arts Council will be considering the implications of McMaster in the longer term.
This Government has a proud record of support for the arts, and we announced in October last year that grant in aid funding for Arts Council England will rise to £467m by 2010/11 - an increase of 3.3% above inflation over the next 3 years. This support has allowed the sector to thrive. Audiences have increased, arts education programmes have expanded and the outstanding quality of our arts is widely recognised.
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