ACE chief Henley rejects ‘ugly’ criticism of community engagement efforts

Arts Council England chief executive Darren Henley has responded to renewed criticism that the funding body prioritises community engagement over artistic excellence, calling characterisations of the two being distinct “skewed” and “exclusive”.

Speaking today (3 April) at the Engaging Communities in Arts and Culture conference in Salford, Henley addressed the fallout following the announcement last week that Wigmore Hall will no longer take public subsidies through ACE.

The organisation said that the decision was taken in part due to the demands of community outreach work required by the funding body’s Let’s Create strategy.

Discussing the debate the decision provoked over the relative importance of access and excellence in the arts, particularly in classical music, Henley said: “To be honest, I’d hoped that this was an argument that had been put to bed many years ago.

“But it seems to have reared its ugly head again recently.

“Some people appear to believe that excellence can only be delivered via certain art forms – and exist in certain places. Let’s be clear – excellence and access are not mutually exclusive.”

He added that excellence “thrives among all art forms” and is “not the preserve of a chosen few” or defined by “a small group of gatekeepers”.

Skewed framing

Henley referenced comments made to The Guardian by John Tusa, who was formerly the managing director of The Barbican from 1995 to 2007 and chair of Wigmore Hall from 2000 to 2011.

Tusa called for ACE to recognise the arts as “a wonderful continuum that starts at the top and goes all the way down to the pleasant and the humdrum and the community at the bottom, and they are all connected”.

In response, Henley said, “‘At the bottom.’ That’s not a continuum. It’s a hierarchy.

“And it’s a hierarchy that I utterly reject.”

He added, “We must not allow our world to be characterised as a pointy triangle with excellence on high and access and community at the base.”

“This framing is skewed, it’s exclusive, and it risks killing the very thing its proponents love – great art.”

“Access and excellence are not an either/or scenario. The fact is that the one leads directly to the other.”

‘London needs to prosper’

Wigmore Hall director John Gilhooly told the audience at the venue’s season launch last week that he didn’t have an anti-community or anti-outreach agenda.

However, Gilhooly said he took “issue” with Let’s Create because although “very well-intentioned”, it attempts to overcome the “systemic failure” in arts in education, which he said needs to be addressed by government and not the National Portfolio.

Gilhooly has said that the decision to leave the portfolio was “not an outright attack” on ACE, describing it as “ a separation, not a divorce”, but questioned whether the funding body was still an advocate for the arts or “an enforcer”.

“We hugely and totally believe in community and outreach work, and we work with some of the most marginalised people in society here, we work with schools… and that is central to what we’ve been about,” he said.

“There is no anti-community or anti-outreach agenda here at all that will continue.

“We wish Arts Council England all the best; we thank them for getting us here; this is not an attack… it is part of democracy, speaking up, saying what we need to say and what many in the music world feel. For other disciplines, this policy works, but for classical music, it clearly hasn’t.”

Referencing ACE’s treatment of English National Opera, he added: “I don’t think we should demolish a resident opera company in one of the world’s great capitals… yes, the nation needs to prosper, but for the nation to prosper, London needs to prosper as the great capital that it is and all the soft power this brings.”