Arts Council in England ends funding to 1 in 5 companies
December 20th, 2007 • theatre
Nearly 200 arts organisations in England have been told that their Arts Council funding will end from next April:
The National Student Drama Festival, for example, founded in 1956 and with starry alumni that include Simon Russell Beale, Pete Postlethwaite and Meera Syal, has been told to expect to lose its £52,000 annual grant, which could jeopardise its annual festival in Scarborough, taking place in three months.
Holly Kendrick, the festival’s director, said: “We think that this decision is unreasonable, but it is particularly serious for us because of the timing. We have commitments three months ahead. We now have to find a third of our funding at impossibly short notice.” The group said it had recently been discussing plans with the council that carried up to 2010. [...]
The Exeter Northcott Theatre has been told to expect to lose its £547,000-a-year grant from April 2009. It received the news as it reopened after a £2.1m redevelopment programme that had seen it closed for nearly a year.Steve Gratton, chairman of the Northcott, said: “I simply cannot understand why the Arts Council would … allow public money to be spent on its redevelopment, and then pull the plug just as the theatre reopens.”
Russell Gilderson, chair of the Drill Hall - also stripped of funding and likely to close unless the decision is reversed - writes:
Over the past few years ACE has effectively divorced itself from the arts organisations it funds.It calls itself the national arts development agency but no one has ever seen a single national arts development strategy. So where is the strategic logic behind this cull? And more to the point, exactly how does ACE see this as taking the arts forward into a climate of greater inclusion?
While a number of remaining companies will receive above inflation increases to their current level support, more than a fifth of the groups currently receiving funding will receive nothing at all.
You can support The Drill Hall’s campaign via their website: there’s no small irony in the Arts Council’s interest in diversity and apparent concern over the “sustainability” of the 30 years old organisation will likely lead to the cancellation of a planned five-year education programme addressing homophobic bullying.
The NSDF (National Student Drama Festival) is putting together a petition ahead of the January 9th deadline for appeals - for information on how to support them, visit their site. For what it’s worth, a number of the people I know now making successful careers in theatre - as directors and writers - were first recognised through NSDF, with two of the most successful by-passing theatre school to get there. I don’t know how that kind of career path will remain viable without the support of organisations and events like NSDF.
