Your report on the outcome of the Arts Council’s national portfolio funding round for 2018-2022 (Arts Council to spend £170m more outside London;, 28 June) says that “It was a particularly good day for organisations applying for the first time”. In fact it was a very much better day for organisations already within the portfolio – 96% of which were successful compared with just 37% of new applicants (or 30% if museums and libraries included for the first time in the general portfolio are discounted).
Launching the portfolio, Nicholas Serota said that the Arts Council was looking to support “green shoots” and greater “diversity”. He and his board are perhaps overly self-congratulatory about an outcome that sees a portfolio intended to “disrupt” and “challenge” lose only 24 out of nearly 700 previous awardees and where a third of the new entrants are from the museum sector.
Melanie Nock
International Arts Partnership
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