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ACE’s “new approach” to funding will see £1.5m fed into Luton from 2016 – 2019 to develop its arts and cultural provision.

Luton Carnival
Luton Carnival
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£1.5m has been ring-fenced for arts organisations in Luton via Arts Council England’s (ACE’s) new ‘Luton Investment Programme’. Described by ACE as a “new approach” that could “potentially influence how we work with / invest in places in the future”, the programme will allocate between £40,000 and £375,000 to five recipients for activity in the town from May 2016 to March 2019.

The programme is intended to complement the Luton Creative People and Places project but will not be run by a lead organisation. It is organised into five strands of activity, and will see the appointment of a creative producer for the town, the establishment of a new cultural celebration, the creation of a public realm arts plan, a professional development programme for arts providers in the town and the development of a ten-year vision and strategic arts and cultural plan for Luton. Organisations, individuals and consortiums were all eligible to apply, and successful applicants are due to be announced.

ACE noted that whilst Luton is a place with low engagement in the arts, it is well placed to develop a strong arts programme as one of three “super-diverse” populations outside of London in which no ethnic group is in the majority. Luton Culture, the organisation leading the Creative People and Places project, welcomed the new approach, saying that since 2010 arts investments have “failed” to have “long term strategic impact on the town” and “applications to Arts Council funding have not been very successful”.

Three large publicly funded organisations in Luton have been dropped by ACE in recent years. The Luton Centre for Carnival arts, created in 2009 and said by ACE to mark a “paradigm shift for the future of the UK carnival sector”, lost all of its funding as an NPO in 2014. In addition, both The Hat Factory, which is now part of Luton Culture,  and Theatre Is…, which conducted much of its work in Luton, lost their status as Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs) in 2012/13.

Luton Culture told AP of its hope that the requirement for successful applicants to demonstrate a legacy “will enable existing and new arts and cultural organisations to flourish longer-term”. Luton Borough Council agreed, saying that a key element of all the bids “is to demonstrate how impacts will be sustainable in the longer term beyond the three-year funding”. ACE confirmed that it will examine the impact of such a legacy on the arts and cultural infrastructure in Luton over the three years in which the funding is active via an independent evaluation.

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Comments

Other lottery distributors have used place-based approaches to lottery investment for years. When other distributors do this they set out the evidenced needs they want to see addressed, provide an indicative total funding amount, and invite localities to assemble a single partnership / consortium to lead and deliver it in line with their own priorities. ACE on the other hand decides not just the objectives and amount but exactly how they want the money spent, by whom and on what. And they definitely don’t want prospective partnerships to select themselves or be chosen locally or even for there to be any conferring between them before their separate applications are submitted for the separate ’strands’. Only ACE shall decide who should be working together. And only subsequently will they be required by ACE to do that as a condition of funding. But it will all work perfectly because successful applicants will all be members - along with local ‘strategic’ partners - of an over-arching “Arts Strategy Group led by Arts Council England” (page 6 of ACE guidance ‘About Other Partners’) Luton must be immensely grateful that ACE - with its ‘deep local knowledge' - will generously continue to maintain such hands-on control and that ACE's expert officers will be on hand throughout to tell them all exactly what they must do. Arms-length? Is that short arm or strong arm?