Theatre Trust director speaks of cuts impact on the industry

The Theatres Trust has just received word that its grant will be slashed by £10,000 starting next April, making it the latest victim of budget cuts in the arts industry. Arts and Cuts spoke to Director Mhora Samuel about the latest developments and their impact on theatres in England.

“The Theatres Trust receives an annual grant of £55,000 from English Heritage. It has remained at this level since 1994 and equates to an annual reduction in subsidy as our grant has not risen with inflation. English Heritage has indicated that that our grant will reduce to £45,000 from 1^st April 2011. This is the third year in a three-year funding agreement and we have yet to hear what arrangements are to be made from 2012 onwards.

“This grant is awarded towards delivery of our work as a statutory consultee in the planning system. By law local authorities are required to consult the Trust on planning applications concerning land upon which there is a theatre.  In this way we are able to advise local authorities on development proposals that could have an impact on the continued existence of theatre buildings and securing their future use as theatres.

“In offering advice and working towards protecting theatres, The Theatres Trust’s work covers the arts, heritage and design sectors in England, Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland.  In the developed nations respective governments and assemblies are beginning to assess the level of grant aid they can provide to these sectors.  All are looking to make cuts or make standstill grant allocations to theatres.

“In England the immediate impact has been on the level of grant from DCMS to the Executive Arms Length Bodies.  Arts Council England’s cuts in 2011/12 are now known and we now know the level to which it will be passing on cuts to theatres that are currently regularly funded organisations.  On a strategic level, economic, social and educational investment has been lost and there have been some significant casualties such as Creativity Culture & Education which will lose its entire grant.  English Heritage has also received a very significant cut.

“The DCMS decided to cut its grant to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) entirely and the Department of Communities and Local Government has cut its entire grant to Planning Aid.  CABE, English Heritage and Planning Aid have significant advisory roles, which support local artists, local communities and help to generate inward investment. The future provision of these services is under review.

“Most significantly it is the cuts included in the CLG settlement on local authorities that will be felt by many theatres, particularly where theatres are owned and operated by local authorities. They are reviewing if they should continue to own and operate them as before.  Local authorities are also responsible for Planning and Arts Development and many are responding to the cuts by restructuring, not reappointing posts and reducing departmental resources.

“This reduction of resources is in the context of an increased focus on localism and neighbourhood planning and an emphasis on the Big Society where communities and individuals are being encouraged to have a wider engagement. Local authorities are expected to support these developments.

“In this climate theatres are having to respond to sudden major reductions in funding and support and advice, and are refocusing their businesses to become more self sustaining. For some, this will mean falling on reserves whilst re-evaluating their business activities. For others, who find themselves facing an uncertain future there could well be no choice but to close, merge or sell assets.

“If the cuts had been introduced over a longer time period it would have provided more time for theatres to adapt.  Given that the level of funding the Government provides towards arts, heritage and design is amongst the lowest across its departments, the difference in cost terms to the Government as a whole would have been minimal, but to the arts organisations affected the speed of change is going to be significant to their future resilience.

“If the cuts had been introduced in a more managed way, for example by protecting local authorities contributions to the arts for up to two years, it would have given theatres more time to adapt, make the transition and secure their future and provide a more solid base to replace public funds with new forms of financial support being encouraged by the Government (such as philanthropy).

“We have a small advisory team here at the Trust that advises on all aspects of concern to theatres and we are meeting with community based groups, theatres and local authorities across the country to discuss how they are managing the impact of cuts to local theatres.  We are aiming to secure future use, and helping groups to consider options and ways forward.”

The Theatres Trust can be contacted on 020 7836 8591 or info@theatrestrust.org.uk

Comment from ‘Save the British Film Industry’

Interesting feedback from Jonathan Stuart-Brown of Save the British Film Industry.com

“Thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis leads to a better arts set up in the UK and maximises the chance of creative talent being unleashed.

Assetion. Counter-assertion and challenge. Conclusion. Repeat the process. Free, fair, fearless debate.

It is NOT about the name of the quango or the quango office. It is all about the honesty, morality and patriotism of the person in the office and the aggregate group think.

The arts quango industry in the UK has been corrupt to a staggering level for decades but not scrutinised by the real police, the media or nominal watchdogs (often big recipients of public money from those who they were meant to police).

People in The Arts industry do steal, cover up, embezzle, fiddle expenses in a way which an MP would blush, have side companies alongside public money administration jobs where A gives public money to B who gives public money to A.

Literally hundreds of millions have just been stolen or misappropriated…and no consequences as it is “art”.

The more the quangos and level of bureaucracies, the harder it is for anyone without a huge attention span and zeal for research to follow. The less scrutiny, the fewer consequences, the greater the corruption.

The Department of Culture is lazy, inept, clueless. Truly imbecilic. Gone are the days top intellects, hard workers and well informed wise people worked in The Department.

The Select Committee could – sadly – put on a farce at The West End without any script other than the evident lack of knowledge, insight, research they display in every Committee hearing.

People lie to them without challenge or consequence.

The media takes no notice as it is only mysterious art…and too complicated or boring to follow the money.

Far far far too much depends on personal honesty and integrity in arts quangos from people who learned very bad habits from the others in the industry who do not administer public monies with a straight bat.

Private monies, private patronage…do what you want.

Public monies…administer with great honesty and do not use to self-enrich to enrich family, friends, your own in club.

The only way to achieve the latter in an ever dishonest industry is to ring the changes every two years with people who have handed out public money in arts then prevented from doing so again for five years. It stops the cliques forming.

We could even hand out all public monies via libraries and Youtube pitches with each library volounteer team voting YES or NO. This guarantees wide BIG SOCIETY participation. Not corrupt deals in the dark.

The film industry only exists in the south-east because there are sound stages (the thing which really bring in the billions in inward investment) in west London and part of North London. 300 acres controls the inward investment and a small in club cabal actively lobbies to stop sound stages being built on the literally 200 000 plus acres in the regions which people can not give away. These could become state of the art sets such as sci-fi, pyramids, ancient Rome, Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, New York, Moscow, North Pole, Beijing, medieval castle, jungle etc. These can double as tourist theme parks.

We could have a regular 250 000 people employed in the film industry across the UK and £25 billion a year annual turnover.

However a small cabal wants to prevent it – and the power shift from west London – and regardless of what quango is in power, the cabal is always pulling the strings to stop sound stages being built around the UK.

When sound stages are built around the UK, so the film industry will spread around and lead all private investment in arts, music, culture. But the very quangos set up to achieve it have been staffed by people trying to prevent it.

London would gain in absolute terms but LOSE in relative terms as other regions rose and closed the gap.

Instead of grabbing this point, Jeremy Hunt and David Cameron prefer to build a needless train set for £30 billion which they can not play with until 2025.

It is not cuts…as some cuts cut out corruption and cancer, they remove articles.

It is personal morality, true UK wide participation and ethos, and breaking up the in-clubs.

The public monies should be spent on physical infrastructure which attracts inward investment…sound stages and sets around the UK.

But as The Government is truly clueless on this, THEN it is time to pray and pray hard. It will take a miracle.

http://www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com/2010/12/high-time-to-earnestly-seek-divine-help-if-we-want-a-real-uk-wide-british-film-industry-employing-250-000-people-and-25-billion-a-year-for-chancellor-george-osborne/“

NCA urge public to show their support for the arts

The National Campaign for the Arts (NCA) is the UK’s only independent campaigning organisation representing all the arts. They do not receive any core subsidy from the public or political purse and are funded by members to carry out vital lobbying and advocacy work.
Arts & Cuts interviewed Louise de Winter, NCA Director, about the budget cuts and their effect on the arts industry.

Q: What has been the initial reaction and responses you’ve been getting from the public since the UK budget cuts announcement?
Ms De Winter: In terms of responses from the public, over 15,000 people have signed on the I Value the Arts website to show their support for the arts.

Q: How have the budget cuts affected people in terms of job losses?
DW: It’s too early to tell how this impacts on jobs. Not all funding decisions have been announced and local governments (who also fund the arts) are waiting to hear what their settlements will be. However, we do know that Somerset County Council has recently voted for a 100 per cent cut of its arts development budget (£159,000). This is bound to have an effect on those organisations involved.

Q: What is your organisation’s stand on the budget cuts issue?
DW: The National Campaign for the Arts worked vigorously with the sector to make the case for public investment in the arts. We always understood (as indeed did the arts sector as a whole) that the sector could not be immune from the cuts and lobbied hard to make sure that the cuts were not too fast or too deep. The Chancellor announcing a 15 per cent cut to ‘frontline arts organisations’ appeared to have heard those arguments by limiting the extent of cuts to organisations. However, the cut to Arts Council England of 30 per cent will still have a massive impact on ‘frontline arts’ and organisations, as many programmes, projects and organisations were also funded through ‘strategic funding’. For example, the Manchester International Festival is not a regularly funded organisation, but received funding directly from Arts Council’s strategic funds. Similarly, the 50 per cent admin cut that the Arts Council will have to make to its own costs, is also bound to impact on the arts sector as its capacity to respond to artists’ needs and inquiries will be more curtailed.
Add all of that up with the 28 per cent cuts to local government (which will probably also massively rebound on arts and culture budgets, as evidenced by what happened in Somerset) and one can see that the outlook for the arts is very bleak.

Q: Do you feel the government could have handled the cuts differently?
DW: I think the DCMS could have thought more clearly first about what type of organization and funding body it wanted the Arts Council to be, before making such massive cuts to its budget. Given that the Government expects the Arts Council to probably pick up some of the functions from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and the UK Film Council (both NDPBs announced for abolition) it doesn’t appear to have thought through how it might do that with reduced staff and reduced funding.

Q: How have you been able to help so far?
DW: The NCA has responded to events by informing politicians and the press and media about the impact on arts organisations and on local communities. Through campaigns such as I Value the Arts we have been able to alert signatories to potential changes in arts provision taking place on their patch and asking them to attend council meetings or write to their local councillors to outline how they feel about the arts in their area and to articulate their support for the arts. The NCA has also written to local councillors, local MPs and to the Ministers also to bring our concerns to their attention, but ultimately this is an issue where it is important for local citizens and local voters to get engaged.

Q: Are there any events, gatherings or meetings you are organising that you would like to encourage arts lovers to go to?
DW: We will be holding an event on 13 December (more details to be available soon) about the arts and the Big Society, involving Nat Wei, one of the architects of the Big Society, who will outline how he sees this working in relation to artists and arts organisations.
Generally, we would encourage arts lovers to consume as much of the arts locally to them as possible – the old adage of ‘if you don’t use it you’ll lose it’ rings very true now. Be as supportive as possible of local arts events and organisations and where possible, also offer to help and volunteer.

Q: Is your organisation struggling for funding as well?
DW: Yes. The NCA does not receive any Government or public funding to carry out its remit. We are the independent voice of the arts in the UK. Our funding comes from our membership and what we can fundraise. Even though our work is needed now more than ever, we still struggle for funding.

For more information about the NCA please visit www.artscampaign.org.uk

Interview with Anthony Alderson

The cuts could provide an opportunity for reform

This week A&C spoke to Anthony Alderson, director at Islington’s Pleasance Theatre on North Road. The Pleasance is one of the few entirely self-sufficient large theatres still to be found in London, so it’s no surprise that its director has some strong views about government funding, its impact on those who accept it, and where it could be redirected.

Choosing to avoid Arts Council England (ACE) funding was a founding principle of the theatre, for which Alderson cites two reasons. The first and more pragmatic is that subsidies can suddenly be withdrawn for reasons outside the recipient’s control, as we are currently seeing.

The second reason is a more fundamental one. The theatre wanted to ensure that it retained “freedom to programme and to do what we want, rather than being curated or channelled by ACE policy.”

While the theatre itself doesn’t receive ACE funding, there are plenty of theatre companies who perform there which have Regularly Funded Organisation (RFO) status. To Alderson, this inevitably means giving up some freedom to the “young producers [at ACE] essentially curating what the arts in this country are, and I don’t think that’s the right way to fund things.”

Surrendering a degree of creative control is bad enough for companies struggling to produce impactful work on a shoestring budget. Unfortunately, this is not the only indignity suffered by the RFOs.

“I object to having to spend money on administration simply to track money and justify what you’re doing,” says Alderson. He describes the drip-feed of funding diverted into keeping track of itself as simply “bonkers”.

For him, there are far more efficient ways ACE and local government could help local theatre to flourish, and some of them needn’t cost a penny. The most critical factor in the success of any production is public awareness – and this is exactly where local authorities can help.

“What if we allowed artistic communities free space to advertise – for example on lampposts? This would bring greater exposure and it would pay for itself in ticket sales and less money spent on fly-posting and flyering.”

This kind of assistance to the arts isn’t just about packing in audiences and boosting sales revenue for theatres and companies, however. For Alderson, increasing the visibility of the theatre ought to be central to the government’s strategy for rebooting communities and instilling a new spirit of localism in Britain.

“The centre of the Big Society is the arts. Theatre brings communities together on all levels. We ought to be spending money on getting people in who wouldn’t ordinarily go into the theatre.”

Theatres, in Alderson’s view, provide a nexus for communities, functioning as a meeting place, a “pressure valve… the expression of our democracy,” and a stimulus to local businesses. He believes that tens of millions of pounds are spent in local pubs, restaurants, and other enterprises as part of the halo effect of theatrical productions.

“The return is far greater than the investment,” says Alderson. This may have been the argument deployed by every sector as they sought to hold off the Chancellor’s axe, but theatre has a case study; the Edinburgh Festival.

“The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which exists for 3 1/2 weeks of the year, puts between £85 and £100 million into the local economy,” he says. This is an exaggeration, but not by much; a study by Edinburgh Council in 2004-5(.pdf, summary on page 40) found that the Fringe generates up to £75m a year. Another study, launched earlier this year, will report on how much this has grown.

Ultimately, Alderson believes, it is the Fringe which points the way for the future of British theatre. “There is no culture for exchange or entrepreneurialism in some of the funded organisations…that’s where the money should be going.”

This is a far cry from the public lamentations of a prevision generation of thespians over the demise of the government funded repertory theatre (to which Alderson responded on The Guardian’s Comment is Free). And the Fringe can provide an equally rewarding career path for young actors as the rep once did; “There is a fantastic structure there for young people – plenty are happy working in the Fringe, not just the West End, and people make careers out of it.”

Alderson keeps coming back to the same refrain: the best place to spend money on supporting the theatre is on increasing its visibility. “There’s a balance to be struck between money spent on art and money spent on marketing,” he says. “Without marketing, you might as well not do the art.”

Whether that be allowing theatres and companies to advertise on council property for free, setting up local message boards for theatre companies to post programmes, or a central online box office selling tickets for every Fringe show in London, Alderson believes that artists need to be given the tools to get on with the job.

“It needn’t cost a lot of money and could be self-funding, but it needs capital to get it off the ground.”

For a government that hopes to save money by having ordinary people organise their local communities, the message couldn’t be any clearer.