Last year, in a bid to distance herself from the financial activities of her husband, Tessa Jowell claimed that she had not read over the fine print of the joint mortgage applications the couple had made. It now appears that far from being an oversight on her part, a lack of attention to financial detail was par for the course for the Culture Secretary. The Olympics are currently set to cost the country four times the original estimate and there is no guarantee that the new £9.3bn figure (p1) is a final costing. In fact, the bill has gone up by £6bn since the last Government estimate five months ago, so it really is anyones guess how much more it will increase in the next five years. Earlier this year, in the first of ArtsProfessionals online polls, over 56% of readers felt that hosting the Olympics would not bring benefits to the arts that outweigh the loss in Lottery funding; the new budgetary revelations will only swell that proportion. Yet even now, as arts funders are grappling with huge dents to their funding plans for the next few years, Peter Hewitt et al are still welcoming the prospect of the Cultural Olympiad, albeit with increasingly muted enthusiasm.
The expectation that the arts will gracefully play the fall guy when theres not enough public funding to go around is just another manifestation of the financial straightjacket in which the sector operates. And, of course, things are likely to get worse. Just as medical breakthroughs increase expectations of the NHS, thereby pushing up costs, so innovations in the arts the lifeblood of the sector increase the demand for funding. Given the limited resources available to statutory funders, its now time that more arts organisations start to apply their own creativity to innovative funding solutions. At the recent Mission, Models, Money Intelligent Funding symposium (p3), John Knell outlined ten practical steps for arts organisations wanting to secure their financial futures. His conclusion? Dont wait for the public funding machine to deliver arts organisations should act now to bring about the structural shift in funding that is needed to secure the sector in the years ahead.
Liz Hill and Brian Whitehead
Co-editors
Does your organisation have the skills to employ a new approach to financial management, to maintain income as public funding decreases?
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