Arts Council England has learned from its mistakes, says Chair
Liz Forgan, Chair of Arts Council England (ACE), has robustly defended ACE's new funding arrangements, application processes and transparency at the State of the Arts conference this week. She challenged delegates: “bring me an application form from anywhere in the world that is shorter and simpler than the National Portfolio application form. If you want upwards of £75k of public money, you will answer 11 questions and not complain!” She said that ACE has learned from the questions raised by the Mackintosh report after the last, disastrous, funding round (AP176), and continued: “I certainly don't expect that when we announce our funding decisions all will be peace and light, but we will have done our damnedest to make it fair.” ACE has a responsibility to fund the “richest possible mix of talent and taste”, and Forgan emphasised: “I don't want you to be in any doubt about what we are doing and why – we don't want to repeat the mistakes of the last spending round. This process is transparent.” ACE has issued statements explaining the processes it is going through in selecting its new National Portfolio of funded organisations and setting out a timeline to show what is happening to applications in advance of announcements at the end of March.