Levelling down London

The reallocation of such a significant slice of ACE funding away from the capital has caused shock. But it was always part of the Let's Create strategy.

Thousands of people affected by ACE’s new National Portfolio announcement last Friday (4 November) spent the weekend variously in celebration, relief, outrage and - for some London organisations - in disbelief and crushing disappointment.

While ACE has delivered what Let’s Create promised, Levelling Up demanded and DCMS instructed, no-one quite believed it would be so bold in its “invidious choices”. No-one quite believed levelling up would entail such a levelling down for London.

This assault on the capital provoked gasps of indignation from theatre twitter, horrified that Hampstead, the Donmar, the Gate and ENO could fall under the axe.

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But equally it drew bewilderment from new portfolio entrants who did not believe their success should come at the cost of dismantling London’s global powerhouse of a cultural offering.

Even those who had been pessimistic about the outcomes were surprised at the scale of the damage inflicted on London - a reduction of £24m a year* - and the impact that reduction will inevitably have on the already precarious workforce.

So while ACE can be applauded for taking great strides towards realising its Let’s Create ambitions across the country, I don’t think anyone who took part in ACE's extensive consultations held across the country back in 2018 thought this is what the future would or should look like.

After so many years of planning, Friday’s announcement should have been a triumphant unveiling of a new vision for culture across England, in person at the UK’s next UK City of Culture no less.

Instead, one could only feel sympathy for the three tense figures uncomfortably defending decisions imposed on them in a hastily reconvened online press conference.

*This article was amended on 8 November to correct the level of reduction.

Link to Author(s):

Ruth Hogarth

Opinion

Policy

Cross artform

Arts funding

NPO2022

Published: 05-11-2022

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Comments

HCB replied on 11 Nov 2022 Permalink

Levelling down

This is the inevitable end-result of a process that has its roots decades back, in the Palumbo/Rittner era. The arm’s length principle has been consistently eroded, political appointments at the top have been made to emasculate the Arts Council, and it has consistently failed to fight on behalf of artforms or the organisations it funds, preferring to wring its hands and say “anything is better than nothing”. Ever since the Arts Council allowed the concept of justifying the arts as businesses that are only valued for their economic contribution — seen also in the pressure for commercial activities and appointments to boards of those from antipathetic commercial entities and City firms — the skids were under notions of creativity and artistic enterprise. Dorries was only the latest in a long and dishonourable line of philistine arts ministers and by the time of her appointment the Arts Council was so devoid of backbone that it could only roll over under the pressure. The cuts will save a minuscule fraction of overall government spending (probably less than the MoD, say, spends on paperclips or failed equipment requisition in a month) but satisfy the government’s “war on woke” agenda while paying lip-service to the near-defunct “levelling up” commitment. Unfortunately for all the real people whose livelihoods, employment and families will be severly damaged by this “redistribution”, the arts have always punched far above their weight in using meagre resources to bring ideas, inspiration and enjoyment to huge numbers of people, while often being critical of the status quo. The disproportion between the amount of money invested in the arts and their impact is miraculous, but too often poses a perceived threat to a government that hates any debate or questioning of its policies or decisions. Ministers relish making public pronouncements about Britain’s international arts reputation, but this shows their satisfaction only comes if they can harness the arts to theirvown political agenda.

Mancunian1 replied on 22 Nov 2022 Permalink

All hail the North

Whilst levelling up funding for the arts should not result in levelling down funding for London, it is an indisputable fact that in excess of 80% of the country's cultural philanthropic funding and a huge proportion of public funding has gone to London arts and culture, including the direct funding from DCMS to London galleries and museums, separate to ACE investment. There have been decades of underfunding for cultural orgs North of Watford Gap. In 2012 combined DCMS and ACE funding provided each Londoner with cultural benefit £68.99 (a ratio of 15:1) and £4.58 for the rest of the population. So its already taken 10 years for this to be rectified. When cities like Manchester and Birmingham have world class orchestras, art galleries and theatres it has been via investment that is a fraction of that (both public and private) delivered to London equivalents. Manchester was named the 3rd best city in the world to visit by Time Out (London was 13th), and was the only UK city cited by Lonely Planet to make their top visit destinations recently. Given I can travel to Paris and Barcelona more cheaply and reliably than I can get to London by train these days further investment in the North is the future. Very much looking forward to Leeds City of Culture 2023 and Bradford in 2025!