When you wish upon an ACE review

Here it is – the second major report on a UK arts council in as many months. Hot on the heels of last month’s review of Creative Scotland, Baroness Hodge’s paper on Arts Council England (ACE) is out.  

The Hodge review has seemingly meant many things to many people – while it was warmly welcomed by representative organisations and lobby groups who have seen their asks reflected, classical music website SlippedDisc described it as a “bombshell” review that required heads to roll. 

When you include the sub-headings, the ACE review kicks off with forty separate recommendations. The November review of Creative Scotland led with a similar number. Where the Scottish recommendations were tightly focused, and largely achievable, the ACE review is an interesting combination of the pragmatic, mixed with dreams for a better world. 

It’s fitting DCMS chose to publish the ACE review in mid-December. Some parts of the review bring to mind a giant tree on which many in the arts were invited to hang their preferred bauble. The result is a very heavily-adorned ACE Christmas tree indeed. We now await the next step – the translation of this wishlist into a list of new year’s resolutions. ’Tis the season, after all.

Speaking bluntly…

Amid the very many excellent recommendations, we can say with some confidence that some of the ideas will never happen. Surely there is more chance of a team of elves turning up on Santa’s sleigh with brilliant new IT systems for ACE than there is of the Treasury writing a big cheque to deliver the same. Likewise, government and HMRC are unlikely to introduce the principle of varying rates of Gift Aid solely for the arts.  

But other ideas leapt off the page. Hodge’s team have looked at what works internationally – a splash of US-style national endowment here, embracing French-style tax incentives there.

Baroness Hodge recommends ACE adopts the Dutch approach of allowing funded organisations to choose some of the KPIs by which their success is measured. Alongside a core of non-negotiables, Dutch arts organisations are assessed through peer review, against their own stated ambitions. It’s a smart, impact-focused system we should seriously consider replicating. 

A step towards a radically smaller ACE? 

Given the very many things the review encourages ACE to do differently or better, the opening line – “the government must retain the Arts Council” – has a faint ring of Mark Antony. At times it’s not clear whether Baroness Hodge has come to praise the Arts Council or to bury it. 

If you wanted to  fundamentally restructure arts funding in England by devolving it to local mayors (while retaining a radically smaller ACE to manage national organisations), you could do much worse – as a first step – than Baroness Hodge’s recommendation that most funding be determined by local boards. Those boards would “perhaps” be aligned with mayoral authorities, with the mayors invited to have their say in the process. 

Some people were surprised in consultation for this review to be asked if they thought ACE should be abolished, given this existential question was not within the review’s scope. Perhaps the creation of these new local boards, which could easily be handed over to mayors to run in future, is as far as the review felt it could go within its terms of reference. 

Likewise, spinning off responsibility for libraries to the British Library, so soon after ACE lost responsibility for the Arts Council Collection, could leave the organisation as a funder foremost, which happens to accredit museums on the side. This would be the reverse of Hodge’s stated ambition to see ACE as much as a development agency than a distributor of cash.  

ACE’s Best Self 

The Christmas tree nature of the review, and the difficulty ACE has in pleasing everyone, is reflected in the recommendation that the number of ACE funds be reduced and simplified, while simultaneously calling for the creation of four new ones – but the review does attempt to reflect a broad range of opinions about what ACE’s ‘Best Self’ would look like. 

The review outlines an alternative to the current National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) application process which is exciting, recommending five-year terms by intention, not as a result of multiple extensions. And on a rolling programme, so the timing of NPO funding decisions is not at the mercy of elections, fiscal events and the Chancellor’s elusive hunt for headroom.  

Hodge recommends high-performing organisations be given a guarantee they’ll progress to the next Portfolio, risking the loss of at most 20% of their funding. It’s an interesting idea for those unlikely to ever be defunded, but it’s not clear when in the cycle this assurance would be given, or how ACE could both radically simplify its reporting processes while also being able to robustly defend a new definition of “high-performing”.  

The unintended consequences this two-tier approach could create for the organisations not tipped the “it’ll be OK” wink are also hard to anticipate. 

A DIY ACE? 

The part of the report I’m personally at odds with is the heavy hint that funding for support organisations (IPSOs) could be redirected to expand ACE’s own advocacy and co-ordination functions.  

Baroness Hodge is, for example, upbeat on both the Illuminate system and the All In programme. In both cases, ACE deployed its financial firepower and control of purse strings to bring in-house services to rival solutions previously created by small businesses (full disclosure – small businesses similar to mine).  

Rather than embrace the organisations already doing good work, Hodge suggests further pulling the rug out in other areas, setting ACE up in competition with other sector support organisations. It would then, as the sector’s main funder, also advocate for its view on what is The Right Thing in how organisations are run.  

This would threaten diversity and encourage stifling conformity – the review highlights that this has already happened with Investment Principles, but strangely calls for more of the same. I wonder if this was a bauble Arts Council placed on the tree itself? Perhaps a hint of what’s in the pipeline. 

Likewise, Baroness Hodge recommends ACE lobbies government for valuable PAYE-like benefits for freelancers, knowing that arm’s length bodies can’t lobby. So instead, ACE is encouraged to “advocate” – but not in a way that brings it into conflict with government.  Another difficult circle to square.

It’s possible to imagine ACE walking a fine line between lobbying and advocacy with this government. Now imagine Reform win the next election. Could the sector really trust that private, behind-the-scenes ‘advocacy’ was being listened to respectfully and taken seriously? I have doubts.  

Improving communication 

Surprisingly, the review doesn’t have more to say on ACE’s track record of communication. Though what it does say – “people viewed ACE as a command-and-control funding body”, or “there is a need to rebuild trust and respect in ACE”, or “there should be greater transparency”, or “it should adopt a more open…approach”  – hints at an organisation that is by instinct too shut off from the sector it seeks to develop. 

If Baroness Hodge had wanted to emulate the Creative Scotland review with clear and achievable recommendations, a good start would have been a simple recommendation that ACE remove its indefensible one-year delay on publishing the minutes for meetings of its National Council.  

Over to Lisa Nandy 

It’s clear Baroness Hodge and her advisors have listened carefully to a broad range of voices in the sector. Maybe a more appropriate analogy than a Christmas tree, or a list of new year’s resolutions, is a team away day.  

At the end of an away day you’re often left with a list of forty things you could do. You have a glimpse of how your organisation could be perfect. A shining castle on a hill. Doing any one of the forty things will make your team better, but you can’t possibly do everything. It’s time to choose. 

There’s loads of good stuff in this review. The tree is heaving with delights. The ball (or bauble) is now in the Secretary of State’s court to provide a clear response which, at arm’s length of course, makes clear whose wishes ACE is going to make come true.  

It’s for Lisa Nandy, and ACE chief executive Darren Henley, to be a little more Scottish as they write ACE’s new year’s resolutions – tightening up the Hodge review to separate the will-never-happen wishes from the recommendations that can feature as milestones in a concrete, deliverable action plan.