Arts Council England’s (ACE) Chief Executive Alan Davey has pledged to make reducing bureaucracy a key strategy for responding to DCMS demands for it to cut its costs. Reflecting on ACE’s latest stakeholder research, conducted between June and September 2011 as a follow-up to a 2009 study, he described the findings as sending: “a clear message to us – we must – by necessity and design, become less bureaucratic.” The challenge for Davey is to cut costs but preserve individual relationships between ACE and its stakeholders, which the research authors found are key to “determining the quality of working relationships, of partnerships and the respect of stakeholders”. Working relationships with ACE are on the whole improving, but the significant turnover of staff in the last two years, due to restructuring, has had a negative impact on these. Overall stakeholders are of the opinion that ACE is a necessary organisation that is “travelling’ in the right direction”, and the complexity of its responsibilities are widely understood. A parallel survey exploring the general public’s view of ACE’s role found declining support for public funding of the arts, reflecting the “heightened sense of competition for reducing funds”. The public reflect the view widely held by the arts sector that public funding of the arts should primarily be used to improve access, and Davey has indicated that this is now where ACE will be focussing its energies.
