Arts Council cuts: This bloated spectre starves venues that don't fit its mission
COMMENTARY: What's wrong with the Arts Council can be summed up by what someone close to the grants-making body once said to me about the Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames, where I'm a trustee.
She said there were three reasons we would never receive the funding we sought, regardless of anything the Council said in public. We were the wrong end of the Thames. Our BEM (black and ethnic minority) ratio was low. And we were a new theatre.
So, let's get this right, I said. If I took over an old theatre east of London and put on a play about the slave trade starring West Indian actors... She interrupted: "You'd get more money than you'd need."
An organisation that is supposed to finance the arts sees itself as having some higher, missionary purpose, reaching out into places where there is little cultural life. No matter that the people who live there may not want it or that in pursuit of their sociopolitical endeavour they ignore artistic excellence.
Of course, some arts institutions are ring-fenced by the Arts Council. They're the national "flagships", which just happen to be the one group that the City, if push came to shove (except it never will because the Arts Council worthies lavish them with dosh), would delightedly sponsor.
Meanwhile there's this bloated spectre in the middle of it all which spends on its own premises and staff the sort of sums that hard-pressed, front-line troupers can only dream of. This Fat Controller is, you've guessed, the very Arts Council which deals out misery and parsimony elsewhere.
It's true that the arts don't always help themselves, that much more could be done to attract corporate and individual backing. But what signal does it send if the Arts Council does not give a venue or company its seal of approval? How do you explain that to an uncomprehending corporate marketing officer or multi-millionaire?
In the Rose's case, we've never relied on the Arts Council. Just as well, because we missed out today. I'm writing this in a personal capacity. As a theatre we live in hope that one day the Arts Council will see sense.
