Money’s too tight to mention

Arts Council England (ACE) has pushed forward with work on a major new public engagement campaign, ‘Arts Nation’, due to be launched in 2011 – potentially with a broadcasting partner. Funding for the campaign was slashed from £2m to just under £1m, in line with ACE’s £19m in-year cuts and pledge to save £6m from public engagement initiatives (AP220). Twenty-five representatives from arts organisations across the UK (including Southbank Centre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Sage Gateshead, London Symphony Orchestra, Audiences Central and Culture Liverpool) have been appointed to form the External Advisory Board on the project. The group met for the first time earlier this month and spent their initial session discussing how Arts Nation might encourage collaboration across the arts spectrum (including ‘amateur arts’) to encourage greater levels of public engagement, attendance and participation.
The project is continuing despite financial uncertainty for ACE. The funding body has written to all regularly funded organisations (RFOs) asking them to model for a minimum of 10% budget reductions in 2011/12, as a preparatory measure. The news comes as ACE confirms that it is modelling for budget cuts of 25–30% over the next three years, as requested by the DCMS. In separating funding decisions for next year from decisions for the two subsequent years, ACE can avoid accusations of cutting off funding without warning, but for RFOs, this effectively means an end to three-year funding agreements. Veronica Wadley, who has begun her term as London Chair and National Council member of Arts Council England (AP220), has called for everyone in the arts “to hold their nerve”. She added that “confidence in the cultural sector must be maintained”, current levels of which AP has exclusively researched in a new survey (see pp8–9), in order to keep sight of “the immeasurable contribution the arts makes to all our lives”.

http://www.artscouncil.org.uk