Peter Hewitt is to leave Arts Council England, after nearly ten years as Chief Executive. At a time when critical funding decisions for arts organisations are being made, ArtsProfessionals Nick Jordan talked to him about his leadership of ACE, and the legacy he leaves behind.
At an ITC conference this summer, speaker John Knell found himself faced with an interesting suggestion from the audience one that raised a challenging question about leadership in the arts and what it might be. Ruminations from Knell about the role of Arts Council England (ACE), led one delegate to suggest Why not make John Knell the new Chief Executive of ACE? Knowing laughter and cheers from an audience of industry experts ensued.
As far as inside jokes go, this one has considerable merit, and with the job in question having just become available, it couldnt have been more timely. More to the point, it had managed the trick of sounding so very right and yet so very wrong, all at the same time. Knell said he wouldnt want the job anyway, adding pointedly in its current form. The comment, cheerfully subversive, gives another angle to a tricky question: What is leadership, and what does it mean for the arts? If someone like John Knell, an academic, widely respected for his provocative and perceptive insights into the economic nature of the arts sector, is somehow not suitable, then who is, and what should they be doing?
Tough decisions
Since 1998, the person charged with answering those questions and doing the job has been ACE Chief Executive Peter Hewitt. Hewitt resigned from the job earlier this year, deciding it was simply the right time to go, and is set to leave in January 2008. One of his final acts is, suitably, an important one for the sector. He and his team must decide on funding levels for organisations across the sector, in the light of the governments public spending settlement, and its allocation for the arts.
Despite what has been called a relatively good settlement in this case, these are worrying times for small to medium businesses heavily dependent on ACE subsidies. Many will face significant cuts, restructuring, job losses, and, for some, closure. Handing out the bad news in a clear, structured and sensitive manner would certainly come high on any notional list of leadership qualities more so, perhaps, when the decisions made affect the lifeline of subsidy funding. In this leadership context, Peter Hewitt is assured and business-like, with an approach that is quick to emphasise policy, and point to responsibilities beyond the current pain. He says, Regardless of the settlement, it is the responsibility of the Arts Council to take informed and responsible decisions about how they will use this money over the next three years. We have a plan, based on a 2.7% inflation increase, within which certain organisations would do very well. The general rule of thumb is that if an organisation is going to continue to be funded, then it should be at the proper levels, and they should get an inflation increase. But, as youd expect, the Arts Council has to make choices and apply judgements, and there will be some organisations that will not have their funding renewed. And I think that would have been the case, had we got a 100% increase, a 50% increase or a small above-inflation increase.
Asked why he would continue to cut funding to certain groups, regardless of the money available to him, Hewitt is clear: Its the Arts Councils job to make choices between funded organisations, to ensure that arts that are funded by the public purse are funded on terms that ensure that the public gets the best possible result. Theres no question that arts organisations have a life span of some kind or other, and we should constantly be reviewing that.
The success thing
A record of success, built over time, is something all responsible leaders would work towards, serving, as it might, as an ongoing results indicator of good leadership. Peter Hewitt is in no doubt that, since he took over, ACE has achieved such a record. He compares the sector he inherited then, to its position now, When I took over in 1998, its fair to say that there were fundamental questions about the Arts Council itself. Parts of the sector were suffering badly from years of uncertain funding, including three years from 1993 to 1996 when arts funding was at a cash standstill. It had been a tough decade, in many ways. If you look at, for instance, theatres or the orchestras, they were in quite a parlous state. One of the things we have achieved is a significant increase in funding for the arts, with a substantial injection of £25m going into theatre. As a result, I strongly believe that theatre in this country at the present time is completely transformed from how it was in 1998. Theres more new work being written by young writers, emerging writers and Black writers, theres more challenging work, more innovation on the stage. Its a hugely vibrant part of the sector. Orchestras are also in a completely different place, when you consider the conductors that have been attracted in recent years, and the youth choirs and orchestras work that takes place alongside the main platform. We put £35m of additional money into orchestras to help them to change the way they worked, and that has yielded fantastic results.
In terms of listing individual instances of success under his leadership, Hewitt is timely when he points to Creative Partnerships as a major hit. Nurtured over time by Arts Council patronage, and resoundingly endorsed by a Parliamentary Committee that very week, the programmes ongoing work to put creativity at the heart of the curriculum is characterised by Hewitt as a groundbreaking intervention into arts education and creativity.
All these examples and more, combined with the safe, ongoing stewardship of the Arts Council itself, are real achievements, and Hewitt is clearly proud to have played an instrumental part in them. Its been a good ten years, he says firmly. And if an arts council cant point to things such as successful, large-scale investments in, say, orchestras or theatres, then what sort of arts council would it be?
Moments of difficulty
Alas for leaders, examples of perceived failure provide more ways to conjure up definitions of leadership. Whilst catastrophic organisational or individual failure seems to barely merit an apology these days, that has certainly not been the fate of the Arts Council under Hewitts leadership. However, when he concedes only to moments of difficulty, or one or two disagreements with the government, one is tempted to ask for some of his wages back.
Hewitt would contend, that a good relationship between Arts Council and the government has real value for the whole sector, and constitutes another hard-won success. Pointing, then, to the recent public spending settlement, complete with reasonable results for the arts, its easy to see that on these terms Peter Hewitt has some good points to make about what successful leadership might actually mean.
But is this a fair or complete way to judge the success of Hewitts leadership of ACE itself, or ACEs leadership of the sector in general? For him, yes. The results are there, he contends, delivered by an Arts Council in better condition than ever before. But for others in the sector, toiling away at ground level, the success of Hewitts Arts Council has sometime not seemed so clear. From an early stage in his tenure, when the decision was taken to merge the Regional Arts Boards, ACE has faced accusations that it has become a huge bureaucratic machine, growing in such a way, and to such a size, as to become operationally, politically and intellectually remote from the sector it serves. Such criticisms will sound familiar to many in the arts sector, where the apparent master and servant approach may not be seen as producing the healthiest relationship.
As Hewitt himself was quick to note earlier, ACE takes seriously the responsibility it bears towards the public money it is charged with spending. Such concerns are informed by an entirely correct sense of civil service propriety. With Peter Hewitt at pains to explain this public duty clearly in our interview, one is left with the impression that he does not go to the same pains to explain issues from the perspective of the arts sector itself. By arts sector here, I refer to the actual people who do the ground-level work, the work that generates the turnover, that creates the jobs, and brings untold creative value to the millions of people across the UK who are its audience. This is not some idle allegation that Peter Hewitt somehow doesnt understand the arts sector, or care about it, because that is clearly not the case. When he describes the Lottery funding raid, with its £35m cost to the sector, as the lowest point of his time at ACE, he means it both operationally and personally. For a Chief Executive proud of his good relations with government, and his record of steady financial management, being forced to oversee a calamitous reduction in sector funding is not a happy place to be.
A happier place for Peter Hewitt is to restate his belief that the Arts Council has the support of the public in what it does. Referring to the soon-to-published results of ACEs public value debate, he says, There is no question whatsoever that the public support public funding of the arts, and they support the Arts Council.
Asked to name any wrong decisions he has made whilst at ACE, Hewitt is good-humouredly quick to concede that he has, got lots and lots of things wrong. Pressed on the detail, he takes a very long time to come up with an answer that opens, interestingly, with a reflection on success I think that the Arts Council has been very successful in its corporate relationships before a carefully worded but clear concession that the Arts Council, needs to create a more lively and ongoing relationship with artists themselves, and work to create new networks for artists across the country.
Pressed on whether he sees himself as having played an instrumental part in this not having been achieved so far, Hewitt neatly sidessteps the question, answering in broader terms that reflect Arts Council success. Why wouldnt he? It is true to say that many of the challenges faced by Arts Council England, and thus of the sector, are not of their own making. ACE had the Lottery money taken from it, and Hewitt is quick, and right, to agree with the contention that the Public Service Agreement targets it works towards are set by the DCMS at levels impossible to attain. The thinking behind them, he states, was completely out of date, whilst being seen to fail to meet the targets, has he agrees, been very unfortunate.
A difference of emphasis
As Chief Executive of ACE, Peter Hewitt has presumably worked hard to represent both himself and the organisation he leads in a convincing, corporate manner that exudes and, in fact, has the confidence, power and serious business acumen one feels it needs are necessary to get the job done. That approach, whatever the merits, seems not to reflect that of the sector itself, which seems more closely reflected through, say, its voluntary aspects, and its low wages willingly endured. Despite much ground-level resentment about high pay levels at ACE, Hewitt is unrepentant, casting the problem from a different perspective. Are ACE staff paid too much? No. They have very challenging jobs and we need to find good staff who can work in a highly competitive environment. I dont think the Arts Council is overpaid, I do think there are parts of the arts world that are underpaid.
In person, Peter Hewitt is clear, likeable, honest and clearly cares about the work he does and the organisation he leads. In terms of arts leadership, he would doubtless say that he has proved himself. But his relationship with the sector has seemed strained, and the voices of discontent are persistent across the sector and he has not, perhaps ever, made the kind of empathetic engagement with it that might have answered such criticisms. Ultimately, it may come down to a simple, but critical, difference of emphasis, and even a certain presentational style.
Returning to that moment at the conference, when John Knell declined the chance to lobby for a potential career change, it is worth reflecting on what it was that prompted the suggestion. It had come after Knell had criticised the audience of arts sector professionals for not asking Peter Hewitt any tough questions, in the wake of his earlier keynote speech. You were all moaning about him and the Arts Council in the bar, was Knells contention, but presented with the actual person, no one seriously challenged him. You should have had a go at him, Knell concluded cheerfully, and it was a fair point.
The relationship between the leader of the Arts Council and the arts sector may never be an easy one, which is perhaps a function of how leadership is perceived in this sense. But, however it is perceived, Peter Hewitts work is nearly done, and his record is there to judge, before the wary first steps towards building a new relationship with his successor begin.