Let?s face it, a fair proportion of arts organisations facing financial difficulties can have at least some of the blame for their situations laid at their own doors. The Auditor General, in his assessment of Lottery Capital projects funded by Arts Council England (ACE) (ArtsProfessional issue 50, May 19) gave us some graphic descriptions of a wide range of management failings which have led to ACE ultimately covering an additional £33m of unbudgeted costs.
Leicester Haymarket is currently facing a debt crisis of around £450,000, and ACE has admitted that the theatre needs a one-off investment to meet the costs of change (ArtsProfessional issue 51, June 2). And just last week, Brighton Festival Society, the organisation that runs Brighton Dome and the annual Brighton Festival, euphemistically announced an award from ACE?s Lottery Department of over £1.28m to ?bridge the revenue gap for two years? whilst waiting for new funding sources to come on stream? an interesting way of describing the process of being bailed out. But for those facing the prospect of having to cancel their social inclusion projects in the wake of the Diana Fund freeze, life is not looking so rosy. Whichever way you look at it, their misfortune is totally beyond their control. Indeed, they are organisations which should be applauded for generating funds from a non arts-specific source for the type of arts activity (social inclusion work) that is at the very top of the arts policy agenda. Despite this, and despite the fact that their combined funding shortfall is only 1% of the amount used to bail out the aforementioned Lottery capital projects, the chances of them getting even a loan from the arts funding system to see them through until the fog surrounding their funding lifts, look as remote as winning the Lottery. Of course there are rules about funding, without which the whole system would grind to a halt. But somehow the rules seem to become inherently flexible when it comes to bailing out mainstream arts organisations and projects which find themselves in difficulty, yet are engraved in stone when it comes to small organisations trying to deliver low-budget projects to the most vulnerable members of our society. Let?s not fool ourselves into thinking that the world is getting any fairer.