Member Article

Who decides how Arts Council funding should be shared?

This week, the Arts Council’s funding shake-up has been causing much debate, with many organisations being cut from the roster and many seeing cuts. Leila Jancovich, Senior Lecturer at Leeds Metropolitan University, considers its implications on the Yorkshire region and beyond.

There has been a lot of discussion about inequality in levels of arts of funding, between London and the regions, since the rebalancing report at the end of last year showed that £69 per head is invested in the arts in London, and only £4.60 is given to the arts in the regions (Stark et al., 2013). But today I was asked to talk on Radio Sheffield about whether similar inequalities exist within regions, in this instance between Leeds and Sheffield, and the honest answer is, yes of course they do. Leeds take up by far the largest slice of the cake in Yorkshire. But the bigger questions are about how money should be shared and who decides?

Let’s not forget that the reason Leeds looks so well-funded is largely because two organisations (namely Opera North and Northern Ballet) are based here and between them take over a third of the total budget for the region. Opera and ballet nationally take up 22% of Arts Council regular funding. Is this acceptable for an art form which less than 3% of the population ever attend? (DCMS, 2011) In the case of opera, the Arts Council themselves admit audiences are declining.

Furthermore if we look beyond the headline-grabbing figures, £5million cut to English National Opera, and 4% more money being spent in the regions, the reality is that English National opera’s cut has been softened with a £7.5million payment to help them adjust. That sounds like an increase to me! And that money has been transferred to Opera North who have received a £2.5 million or 8% increase and Northern Ballet £2 million or 20%. Money has not truly been redistributed to the regions but transferred from one organisation to another. Inequality does not just exist geographically therefore, but in relation to art form.

Having worked at the Arts Council I have absolutely no doubt that the staff will have invested a great deal of time and effort in careful consideration of their funding decisions. I know that many of the staff debate these issues intensively. But for me the most telling remark, in the many comments over the last few days, was from Alan Davey who praised the way the bigger organisations agreed the cut they received through discussions with the Arts Council. This to me highlights the problem. How many of the smaller organisations, some of whom received a 100% cut, were involved in the same level of discussion and influenced decision making? I would guess none.

Decisions are made by a narrow range of voices, made up of those who are already funded and have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. For inequality to be challenged, a wider range of voices, including individual artists and the public themselves, need to be involved.

Most of the discussion over the last few days has been about the winners and losers in this round of funding based on the very small number of artists already in receipt of funding. An Arts Council senior manager once said to me that this made up less than 5% of the artists working in this country. So the real question is how is this 5% selected and by whom? With over 75% of the current money being allocated to the same organisations who received it last time and many of the so-called new organisations being ones, like Sheffield Museums, that were cut in 2010 but have now been reinstated, it is obvious that what the Arts Council are doing is reshuffling a loaded pack. I would love them to be brave enough to look at a completely new deck of cards.

So in conclusion I would argue that there needs to be greater transparency about how decisions are made at the Arts Council, involving a wider range of people including artists, funded and not funded, and the general public.

I would like to see more vision of what the future of the arts sector might look like rather than historical funding for those who have always been funded

And I would like more honesty about the inequalities that are as prevalent in the arts as they are in society.

If we addressed these things I think we would not only have a more vibrant and risk taking arts sector, but would be better able to build public support for the subsidised arts.

DCMS. 2011. Taking Part survey, the national survey of culture, leisure and sport. [Accessed 23/3/12].

STARK, P., GORDON, C. & POWELL, D. 2013. Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital – A contribution to the debate on national policy for the arts and culture in England.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Carrie Braithwaite .