Budget forces arts cuts

Cuts announced by the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, in the 2009 Budget, have resulted in an immediate £4m cut from Arts Council England’s (ACE) funds next year. ACE had in fact been fearing a greater hit, having been asked to model scenarios of 1.5%, 2% or 3% (AP192): the actual cut amounts to 0.86%. A spokesperson for ACE told AP that it “will not reduce… planned investment in the arts organisations we fund on a regular basis”, but “will reconsider… existing and planned new projects and look to find savings there”. ACE says it cannot find economies from its administration budget, due to £6.5m savings planned through its organisational review earlier this year, which will see 111 jobs cut (AP189). The timetable for announcing where the axe will fall has not yet been decided, but will follow a review of all ACE’s development activity over the coming weeks. Speculation that Creative Partnerships (CP) might fall victim to cuts has been quashed by ACE. Creativity, Culture and Education, which now runs CP, is a Regularly Funded Organisation (RFO) and is therefore protected. The cuts are part of the DCMS’s share of the overall hit. The Department is required to make a reduction in spending of £168m, which includes £20m in additional savings in the year 2010/11. These will largely be made through greater efficiencies and cuts to “back office and lower priority programmes” in the DCMS and its non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs).

For the rest of the UK, cultural funding is devolved to the national assemblies. Major cuts in overall funding from Westminster to the Northern Ireland Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) have been announced, of £123m and £216m respectively. As these cuts are passed on to Welsh and Northern Irish departments and NDPBs, there will almost certainly be an effect on arts funding in both nations. A spokesperson for WAG said that “the Wales Heritage Minister [Alun Ffred Jones] will be making the case for the arts in the coming Welsh Assembly Government budget round... Arts Council Wales (ACW) is about to embark on a root and branch review of its funding patterns which is likely to impact upon arts funding decisions for individual Welsh arts organisations from funding year 2010/11 onwards.” Nick Capaldi, Chief Executive of ACW, called for “courage, ambition and imagination from government” and added that “recession is not the time to give up on investing in people, creativity and aspiration”. The Arts Council of Northern Ireland must wait for guidance from the Department of Finance and Personnel before it learns how it will be affected.
The overall budget for Scotland will suffer cuts of £500m, part of which was announced in the Pre-Budget Report in November. Scotland’s Culture Minister, Michael Russell, called the Budget “deeply damaging” and said the cut would “of course have an impact on our ability to deliver support for the arts and culture in Scotland”. A £33.6m (14%) increase in funding for the arts had been planned by the Scottish Government for the current Spending Review period, which the Minister said would now have to be revised “in common with all other areas of government”. He added that on his arrival in post in February this year, he had warned the directly funded national cultural organisations of potential cuts.