The arts in England are underfunded, and were dealt a blow by Covid from which many organisations have not yet recovered. But that has been only part of the story. The sheer weight of required form-filling, the endless bureaucracy, the impracticable length of time it takes to simply be funded by Arts Council England (ACE) have caused universal frustration among those working in the arts. There is much talk of exhaustion and burnout.
Many organisations have felt frustrated, too, by the strictures of ACE’s flagship strategy, Let’s Create, which, though admirable in principle, with its focus on participation in the arts, is perhaps tilted too far from recognising the expertise and individuality of artists and arts institutions. Especially in classical music and opera – where ACE has made crude interventions into the direction of the art form – the body has been widely condemned for overreach of its powers. As with many things in life, though, opinion depends on your perspective. Funding has been diverted to underserved areas, and grassroots organisations, outside the south-east. Unsurprisingly, those who have received support for the first time are better disposed to ACE than those who have had their funding reduced or cut off.
The report on Arts Council England by Margaret Hodge, Labour peer and former arts minister, urges a bonfire of red tape. That will be welcomed. More controversially, she also recommends binning Let’s Create, the 10-year strategy designed to take ACE all the way to 2030, in favour of a simpler strategy that allows organisations to apply based on their own strengths, rather than endlessly banging square pegs into round holes.
With Hodge’s language of “excellence and access to excellence”, those with long memories might remember Brian McMaster’s report of 2008, Supporting Excellence in the Arts, which similarly urged an end to box-ticking and a revival of trust in artists and arts organisations. Those with even longer memories might recall regional arts boards, which were abolished in 2001 in order to streamline the Arts Council’s operations. Hodge is proposing to revive a version of these bodies – once condemned as wasteful – in order to strengthen regional decision-making, though without, importantly, handing off powers to the political control of metro mayors. (Nationally and internationally important bodies, on the other hand, would stay within the purview of the central ACE operation, which could cause some friction.)
There is often a sense with the Arts Council that it trundles off in one direction for a few years, only to be pulled back in the opposite direction, before the entire cycle begins all over again. Another revival of an old hit is a recommendation to reboot something like the old Creative Partnerships programme, which, between 2002 and 2011, put local artists into schools.
The report has some sensible ideas to help plug the funding void in the arts, without simply demanding more money be coughed up from the Treasury, which in the current climate is unlikely to happen. These include extending existing tax breaks for touring (arts organisations like these tax breaks – they are straightforward and simply incentivise making things and performing them without adding all sorts of extra prescriptions). Ideas on encouraging philanthropy include increasing tax breaks for givers outside London (the vast majority of giving to the arts is in the south-east of the nation).
The report is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Arts Council England as it stands: banish your bureaucracy! Strangle your strategy! And still, England has not addressed the single most calamitous cause of funding reduction in the arts, which is the collapse of local authority support. (Though the report does recommend mandating local authorities to at least have a cultural strategy.) But Hodge does insist that Arts Council England is the right body to deliver public funding to the arts and should continue to exist. And she strongly reasserts its most central and fundamental principle, that it should be at arm’s length from government, protected from political interference.
