We’ve always known that the arts get big slices of the smaller cakes and small slices of the big cake, and A&B’s figures on private investment (p1) have confirmed that this trend continues. Of great concern is the way that the true figures for the arts are still being buried within the figures for the cultural sector as a whole. Few of us have the time to dig around in the detail to work out what is really happening (though you may rely on us to try). As the superficial headlines lauding the upward trajectory of the overall figures quickly enter the general consciousness, it becomes more difficult to rebut received opinion. The truth is that figures incorporating both the arts and the other cultural sectors do us no favours at all. Across the land, board members will be waving their newspapers under the noses of development directors and fundraisers, demanding to know why, if everyone else’s private investment income has gone up by 12%, there has been no such good news for their own organisation. Recriminations, stress and even dismissals could result. Even in these straitened times, the arts are good at securing business sponsorship and getting money from charitable sources. We are still falling behind on access to individual wealth. Now that such donations (even excluding Sammy Ofer’s millions) total more than business and charity investment put together, we have to find a new recipe or end up with only a few crumbs. Meanwhile, it’s worth asking whether A&B should really be called C&B (Culture and Business), to avoid this lack of clarity in the future. Yet the vast majority of its income, even after the 2008 funding review, comes from its Arts Council England grant, with considerable input from the arts councils of Scotland and Wales and the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure in Northern Ireland. It receives no grant funding from any UK national heritage body, nor from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council’s central coffers. Taking the arts shilling with such enthusiasm, it has an obligation to serve the arts sector more usefully. Mr Tweedy has admitted that A&B’s figures should be more transparent. There may well be success stories to celebrate in some parts of the cultural world, but the arts sector deserves to be given the true picture without having to spend hours hunched over a calculator.
Catherine Rose
Editor