ACE’s Evans hits back at claim cost-cutting schemes failed
By Jeremy Austin for The Stage

Arts Council England’s acting chief executive Kim Evans has criticised as misleading and inaccurate claims that attempts to reduce administrative costs, stuff numbers and salaries have failed with such costs rocketing in the past six years.

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Chit Chat - Frayling’s got balls to bash Tessa
From The Stage

New Arts Council England chairman Christopher Frayling is setting his stall out as a tough-talking, intellectual fighter who is more willing to take on the government than his more internally reforming predecessor - the arts council’s version of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams perhaps.

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ACE independence threatened by Whitehall, warns Frayling
By Jeremy Austin for The Stage

Arts Council England chairman Christopher Frayling has used his first public speech at the Royal Society for the Arts to warn that the principle of arm’s-length funding has been undermined to the extent that ACE is now considered as merely an extension of Tessa Jowell’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Suggesting that the system had been reduced to “Venus de Milo proportions”, he warned this would bring with it an erosion of artistic independence, a gradual dismantling of a “coherent framework for arts policy” and a lack of influence in the decision-making process by arts practitioners.

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We shouldn’t make Treasury a scapegoat for funding ills
From The Stage

Chris Smith’s recent observations on the key role of the Treasury in deciding arts policy have put into perspective those exaggerated assessments of the power wielded in Cabinet by the holder of the cultural portfolio.

The patronage which the secretary of state commands is indeed considerable, as are the resources. Yet the limit on that authority is abruptly revealed whenever he or she finds themselves in conflict with the Treasury.

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‘Stop-start’ funding inevitable unless DCMS cuts reversed, warns ACE
By Jeremy Austin for The Stage

A return to ‘stop-start’ funding of cultural organisations is inevitable by the end of the decade if the government fails to listen to the arts community a second time, Arts Council England theatre director Nicola Thorold has warned.

Speaking following the announcement of ACE’s three-year spending plan - dubbed “hard choices in a tough climate” - Thorold said the funding body had tried as best it could not to pass on to its clients the £30 million real terms cut it received from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in December.

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Chancellor delivers mixed fortunes for theatre
By Robert Breckman for The Stage

The budget brought both good and bad news for the arts, with £12 million for leadership training but a freeze on most arts council funding. Robert Breckman outlines the winners and losers in last week’s economic shake-up.

I do not know what is the more exciting, the prospect of a general election or the budget. Indeed, it is difficult to differentiate between the two - the spin and hype vie with one another for the headlines, notwithstanding the latest buzzwords around the NHS, education, police, transport et al.

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Budget heralds black arts era
From The Stage

The latest, Treasury-inspired, Arts Council England grants announcement gives a new twist to the old fashion cliche about Brown being the new black. For, rail as we might against the combined forces of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and ACE, it is the guiding hand of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and no other which has turned the clock back on arts funding.

Yes, the specifics of who should get and who should not are for the council to decide. Likewise, the expected furious response from clients left in the lurch will be for ACE’s staff to handle.

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Assess all areas
By Anthony Field for The Stage


In light of cuts suffered by Arts Council England, Anthony Field argues that Teasury officials must engage in detailed annual analyses when it comes to awarding grants, rather than falling back on neat formulaic responses that fail to address the unique needs of arts organisations.

The recent Arts Council England decision on the future funding of arts organisations raises the old problem of assessment, one that has raged annually since the Council’s inception in 1946.

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I've just had a chance to review the ACE budget announcement and see what it means for dance organisations:

http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/pressnews/press_detail.php?browse=recent&id=415

Over in the right hand column, you can find the detail of what organisations will receive over the next three years. Some 80% of the major companies are based in London, so look there first. Unfortunately, the different art forms are all lumped together, so the ACE dance administrators have to split out the dance companies manually to get an overall impression.

Most dance companies receive an increase in line with inflation, with a few getting more, for instance DanceEast, Siobhan Davies and Candoco. Akram Khan, George Piper Dances and Henri Oguike are allocated 3-year budgets for the first time, having been established as "regularly funded organisations" last time. At under £200,000 for each of these three companies, you can make a case that in terms of artistic merit they should be getting more.

So where has this money come from, given that the overall ACE budget is flat for 2006/7 and 2007/8? It's development work and education projects which will suffer and the latter cutback is almost like a stick in the eye for the Government, given the importance they attach to arts education and creativity. However, I can see the point of maintaining what we have across the next few years with the hope that we can return to a normal service in later years, if the current stop phase of funding can be reversed.

<small>[ 25 March 2005, 01:37 PM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

This story will run and run:

Budget heralds black arts era
From The Stage

The latest, Treasury-inspired, Arts Council England grants announcement gives a new twist to the old fashion cliche about Brown being the new black. For, rail as we might against the combined forces of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and ACE, it is the guiding hand of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and no other which has turned the clock back on arts funding.

Yes, the specifics of who should get and who should not are for the council to decide. Likewise, the expected furious response from clients left in the lurch will be for ACE’s staff to handle.

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Article19 has a thorough analysis of the recent announcement and draws together the dance sector published in the separate figures from the ten regional ACE offices, for which many thanks.

I have some caveats:

- There are omissions from the lists - a few that come to mind with total funding between £500,000 to £1m:

* Chisenhale Dance Space
* Greenwich Dance Agency
* George Piper Dances
* DanceUK
* Foundation for Community Dance

- The Place figures, some four times larger than the next Agency, not only include the Richard Alston Dance company, as stated, but also the London Contemporary Dance School, arguably the leading dance conservatoire in the country.

- time is spent lamenting the relatively small increase granted to Dance City in the North East and then ACE points out that they received a 30% increase in 2003/4.

- the analysis of spending on the quantum of spending on contemporary dance is flawed, as Rambert is not included in this category - does Article19 think that Merce Cunningham is "classical or neo-classical"? It's a shame because there are some serious points to be made about the distribution of funds to the various dance styles, but because of the above, the numbers quoted are innappropriate.

The latest Arts Council spending round
By Michell Lefevre for Article 19

On the 17th of March Arts Council England released its spending plans for the next three years following the governments announcement late last year that arts funding would be frozen at current levels until 2008 at least. With the funding standstill some 121 organisations will no longer receive regular funding from ACE. Article19 takes a look at the winners and losers in the dance sector.

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<small>[ 16 April 2005, 10:43 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Labour broke pledge not to raid lottery arts funds, claim Tories
By Ruth Gillespie for The Stage


Tony Blair’s government has been accused of reneging on promises made in 1997 that it would not raid the National Lottery initially set up as an independent funding source for the arts, heritage, charities and sport, to supplement Treasury spending in other areas.

In a statement issued to The Stage, shadow arts minister Tory Hugo Swire said that under Labour more than £1.5 million in lottery funds had been diverted from the arts and heritage to pay for public services such as health and education, which should be financed directly by the government.

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Arm’s length hopes found outside the main parties
From The Stage


There are two certainties at least regarding the present General Election. Namely, arts issues will not decide who is the victor in even one constituency and the Liberal Democrats need not hold their breath, should they be preparing for government on this particular occasion.

That said, time spent on the periphery can be employed to positive effect. Both Beveridge and Keynes were Liberal in inclination at a time when the party’s prospects were far less rosy. Yet they were crucial in shaping much of the socio-economic policy of the later 20th century.

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Wise council?
By Richard Brooks for The Stage


As Arts Council England undergoes a wide-ranging peer review, Richard Brooks argues that the body’s escalating payroll, penchant for expensive consultants and tendency to favour the old establishment is doing them no favours among their critics.

It gets £412 million a year from the government to spend on its clients and about another £170 million from the Lottery. So Arts Council England is not exactly short of cash. Yet it is an increasingly unloved body and not just by clients who will always want more cake.

More worrying for the council is that culture secretary Tessa Jowell has clashed with its chairman Christopher Frayling, the man she appointed to the job only 18 months ago.

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"Now the government is out, if not for revenge, for some sort of reining in."

I've been told that the peer review of ACE is in line with what has happened in other sectors such as museums and the "punishment" reading of this initiative is far-fetched.

Frayling's predecessor was at least as outspoken and I imagine that Jowell might even be concerned if the ACE CEO didn't complain when funding was frozen for two years.

Ouch!

ACE faces court over collapse of Talawa project
By Alistair Smith for The Stage

Britain’s foremost black theatre company, Talawa, has launched legal proceedings to take Arts Council England to the High Court over its decision to withdraw £4 million funding from the company’s project to build a flagship venue in Westminster.

Talawa’s solicitor John Halford, from Bindman and Partners, said that the company had filed a claim for a judicial review into ACE’s decision.

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Arts council under fire for stockpiling Lottery cash
From The Stage

Arts Council England, along with other Lottery distributors, has been criticised by the Public Accounts Committee for sitting on millions of pounds of lottery money intended to fund projects.

A report by the committee revealed that £2.4 billion was sitting in National Lottery coffers, including £175 million earmarked for arts council schemes.

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Legal aspects of withdrawing a grant
By D Michael Rose for The Stage

Q: What criteria would an arts company need to fulfil to have a chance of winning a court action against a funding body for withdrawal of a grant?

A: The general principle is that the law will not complete an incomplete gift and a gift is not completed until the subject matter of the gift is transferred into the possession of the donee and nothing remains to be done by the donor to complete it.

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