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It?s a red letter day when the National Audit Office (NAO) says nice things about a body involved in the arts ? not least because it isn?t afraid to dish out the harshest of criticism when it is deserved. This time it?s NESTA in the spotlight (p1) and the NAO is particularly praising of the approach it takes to risk management.
A rigorous approach is, perhaps, an obvious requirement for the type of ?high risk? projects funded by NESTA; except that, at the end of the day, the stakes are really pretty low. NESTA has awarded about £40m since 1999, which is but a tiny fraction of the amount awarded through the arts Lottery capital programme during the same period. Presumably, because NESTA?s projects are deemed to be more cutting-edge, exploratory and, to many, incomprehensible than capital projects, they have been more deserving of the form of rigorous monitoring, and indeed, mentoring, for which NESTA has earned its brownie points. It?s a shame that it has taken so many capital funding disasters (ArtsProfessional issue 68, February 23) for everyone to appreciate that risk wears many hats.

Yet for all its plaudits, NESTA has still failed to crack the perennial problem of distributing funds equally across the regions, and mirroring Arts Council England (ACE) funding allocations, Londoners win a far higher proportion of the funding pot than population statistics suggest that they deserve. The most recent round of ACE Lottery funding sees 31% of the pot going to London (and a fag packet calculation reveals an award per capita of over £2.50, compared with 12p per head in the North West!).

NESTA seems to have it about right in terms of project and risk management, and let?s hope that other funding bodies will learn from its approach; but are there any role models who achieve an equitable geographic spread of the Lottery spoils?