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Council says ACE was aware of its involvement in initial bid for ATTL money

Leeds Met University
Leeds Met University

Arts Council England’s (ACE) attempts to distance itself from accusations that rules were broken when it gave the £0.5m Artists Taking the Lead (ATTL) award in Yorkshire to the Leeds Canvas consortium have been undermined by revelations that the Chair of Leeds City Council’s Cultural Olympiad task group, Catherine Blanshard, sounded out ACE Yorkshire on the likely reception to a bid by an arts consortium of which it was a member. And Andrew Macgill, who was then Head of Arts & Events at the Council, has confirmed that he was co-author of the initial ‘expression of interest’ that was subsequently shortlisted by ACE and eventually won the competition. Under ACE’s own rules, public sector organisations were ineligible for ATTL funding (see AP257) and the involvement of the Council gives lie to ACE’s statement that : “at this stage [expressions of interest] of the process there were in fact no public sector bodies involved in the Leeds Canvas bid”.

Blanshard has implicated three former senior Executives at ACE Yorkshire – “probably... either Andy Carver, Ivor Davis or Adrian Friedl” – as having discussed the potential bid with her, but they apparently failed to tell her that that Leeds City Council would be ineligible for funding through the scheme. A spokesperson for the City Council also confirmed that the Council had made it clear to ACE Yorkshire that it was involved in the bidding consortium that submitted the expression of interest.

Among the Yorkshire arts community there are growing calls for the whole truth about the bidding process for ATTL to be revealed. Local artists are preparing to meet early next month to consider their response to recent revelations; and Dr Derek Horton, the former Head of Research in Contemporary Art at Leeds Metropolitan University – which was part of the Leeds Canvas consortium – has written to his local MP Hilary Benn to ask for help for those who are “assiduously attempting to establish the truth about what are apparently scandalous abuses of power in the allocation of significant public resources.” In his letter he refers to an “attitude of arrogance and high-handedness in the use of public money for private patronage that was prevalent at the University under [former Vice Chancellor] Lee’s regime, and which seems also now to permeate the Libraries, Arts and Heritage department at Leeds City Council and the behaviour of ACE in relation to these events.”