Shock at Sustain closure

English arts organisations are shocked at the closure of Arts Council England’s (ACE) Sustain fund to new applications on 9 October, with only a week’s notice, just after AP last went to press. The director of one youth arts organisation told AP that her local ACE officer made it clear at an open meeting “that it would make more sense to apply in the second year of the programme”. She is “shocked” and “was not the only one who was advised to wait”. ACE will continue to announce Sustain awards until decisions have been made on all of the 192 applications it has received. Applications post-marked before the closing date will be accepted, even if they are delayed by Royal Mail strike action. Around £23m remains in the budget following the announcement of a further 16 awards last month (AP202).
 

Speaking to AP, Charlotte Jones, Chief Executive of the Independent Theatre Council, questioned whether the closure had originally been planned. “A lot of people were holding off because they were quite prudently waiting to see what the effects of the recession would be,” she said. “Organisations which have managed to make a case so far for losses incurred may end up being the lucky ones.” An ACE spokesperson told AP that “if in some cases regional officers have advised an organisation not to apply immediately, it would be because they felt the organisation was very unlikely to be successful with their application”. He added that “this advice was not official and did not form part of the information sent to regional offices”, and that “arts organisations were able to apply… whatever advice they received”. On the subject of the closure, he said ACE has always been “very clear that Sustain is a finite fund” to be spent over two years, and has ensured that “organisations were aware that Sustain was heavily subscribed”. A full evaluation of
the impact of Sustain will be carried out at a later date.

AP readers have raised questions about the bar on applying for money to replace reduced local authority grants. The director of a major regional gallery, which is also an ACE Regularly Funded Organisation, argued that “we are more affected by the recession than other arts organisations” because the Government is “squeezing local authorities” which have in turn cut arts funding. He pointed out that many galleries, being free to the public, are not affected by box office income but have been hit badly by other cuts. ACE defended this rule, “as it is counter-intuitive to replace public funding with public funding”. The director of a large-scale regional theatre told AP that his organisation had held back from applying in the belief that smaller, more vulnerable organisations would be put first, only to see theatres of a similar type receiving large sums. “The new emerging companies are the ones that will go to the wall,” he said. “Those on the inside get the funding and those on the outside don’t know the way in and don’t get the money.” He added that to many in the sector, the fund appeared to be a “reward for failure, rather than an incentive to innovation”.