Now we know. This morning Arts Council England released a full list of the winners and losers. Only 17 proposed funding cuts have been overturned either fully or partially, most notably the Bush, the National Student Drama Festival, the Orange Tree, Queer Up North, Eastern Angles and Bristol Old Vic.
That still means that 212 arts organisations are facing a bleak future, 185 seeing funding cut entirely and 27 with grants reduced. Theatre saw 43 non-renewals and reductions including the loss of London Bubble, Kaos, Norwich Puppet Theatre, Komedia, Compass and Derby Playhouse. Transitional funding will apparently be made available to help groups either wind up or downsize, but that isn't going to prevent the huge waste of accumulated cultural capital in experience and expertise that is going to be lost. With better planning it might have been saved.
In theatre there are welcome uplifts for companies such as The Pacitti Company, Stan's Café, Kneehigh, BAC, Unlimited, Quarantine, Improbable, Shunt, Duckie, Company of Angels and Told by an Idiot among others, and the 21 new organisations that come online include Artichoke (responsible for bringing the Sultan's Elephant to London), Punchdrunk, the producing outfit Fuel, Fevered Sleep and Marisa Carnesky.
These are all deserving, but nobody - including those who have benefited - is going to be cracking open the champagne, because the fight is certainly not over. It seems likely that some of those who have been cut will launch legal action against the Arts Council.
Nobody would disagree with chairman Sir Christopher Frayling's assertion that the Arts Council must be able to review and make changes to its portfolio of funded organisations. Many working in theatre felt that it failed to do so back in 2001 at the time of the Theatre Review, when £25 million was pumped to theatre.
Many of these new companies and organisations that are getting funding reflect the huge changes that have taken place in British theatre over the last few years, which have often not always been reflected in either funding, critical coverage or access to our theatre buildings. The Arts Council is right to recognise that these are some of the companies doing the most innovative work and are best-placed to take theatre into the 21st century, generate new audiences and continue to guarantee theatre's place in our culture.
The Arts Council's own website claims today is a story of "excellence, innovation and reach". But the way they have gone about making changes has been so cack-handed, insensitive and inept. The organisation's judgment and professionalism has suffered a blow that incoming chief executive Alan Davey will struggle to reverse. His announcement that lessons must be learned from events of the last few weeks is welcome, although if his suggestion that what is needed is an "external eye" means more highly paid management consultants at the Arts Council, those who have been cut will quite rightly be aggrieved.
Relations between the Arts Council and artists are now at rock-bottom. Even during the dark funding days of the late 80s and 90s, artists felt that they and the funders were on the same side. That is no longer the case. Arts Council bungling, its lack of transparency and dialogue with artists and its inability to take responsibility for its own actions means that instead of celebrating an 8% increase of funding to the theatre sector over the next three years, many feel furious and betrayed.
What should have been a party is being perceived as a bloodbath. And the Arts Council has only itself to blame.
