The ACE funding landscape – how does it look now for the independent sector?

Yesterday I used my journey to and from Huddersfield to reflect on an extraordinary week in the arts.  In between trains I met with a dynamic group of ITC touring companies at the Lawrence Batley Theatre who inspired me with their optimism, realism, knowledge, experience and generous willingness to share with each other.

On Wednesday (ACE decision day) I made a conscious decision not to add to the twitter stream. There was a lot to take in and it was bizarre (thanks to the massive technical crash at ACE that meant even their phone lines were down!) to have to rely on tweets to get the overall picture on their decisions. Eventually a dedicated assistant from ACE National office delivered a paper copy of the detail by hand – Thank you for that!

So – the results as they affect the independent sector (ITC’s membership). As far as we can make out  24 ITC RFOs have lost all their funding and they are as follows: Theatre Is, Trestle, Reckless Sleepers, Box Clever, Collective Artists, DanceUK, Henri Oguike Dance, Moti Roti, New Work Network, Nitro, Quicksilver, Cholmondleys & Featherstonehaughs, Vayu Naidu, Webplay, Yellow Earth, NTC, Fuse, Spike, Forest Forge, Oxfordshire Touring, Theatre Absolute,

Foursight, Third Angel, Natural Theatre Company. (Apologies if we have missed anyone and do let us know – ACE does not provide a list of ‘cuts’).

Some other companies such as: Red Ladder, Out of Joint, Shobana Jeyasingh, Theatre Centre and Action Transport have had a partial cut between 20-50%

Some ITC companies will become new NPOs including Theatre Bristol, Blind Summit, High Tide,  Clod Ensemble, Open Clasp and 20 Stories High.

Some have received uplifts, for example: Unlimited, Hoipolloi, Spare Tyre, Tutti Frutti, The Albany. Oval House, Theatre Royal Stratford East. For many touring companies the uplifts actually represent the amount they would have applied each year from grants for the arts.

The majority of ITC NPOs will be cut by 11% (which is actually standstill in real terms).

The information we can not get from anywhere, except from the individual organisations, is who applied (as a non RFO) and was turned down? We need to know to build a picture of how our sector fared and how much potential was lost this time. ACE has been at pains to stress that they had to reject some excellent bids. Furthermore they are keen to keep open the dialogue with and maintain recognition of the arts sector beyond their portfolio. We want to help them do that. For many companies the NPO application was an opportunity to appear on the ACE radar – we don’t want those exciting ‘bleeps’ to disappear off it now.

We are still trying to get a clear picture of this new landscape but if pressed for some views at this early stage I would raise the following questions and concerns:

• Rural Touring seems to have taken a bit hit (NTC, OTTC, Forest Forge and Proteus) and many Companies are questioning the wisdom of awarding an uplift to NRTF (National Rural Touring Forum) in that context. Can an agency fill the gap left by producing companies?
• Young People were one of ACE’s priorities yet companies at the coal face of producing work for young people have lost out (Quicksilver, Box Clever, Trestle, Webplay and Theatre Is – and they had only just created Theatre Is!). I hope ACE does not think they have this covered by funding the National Skills Academy and (as a so called ‘Bridge Organisation’) The Royal Opera House.
• I still think ACE could have been a bit braver with the bigger organizations such as ROH & RSC. Vivien Duffield’s generous gift, just before the announcements, surely shows how capable they are of attracting philanthropy.

I have spent a great deal of time in the past 48 hours on the phone with members. Some are still struggling to get over the shock but I am heartened by how strategic and clear-thinking many are being. Red Ladder talked about ‘staying flexible’ whilst Trestle were ready with their ‘survival instinct kicking in’.

What do you think? And what can you share with us to help us gain a fuller view of this landscape?

Be Brave Arts Council

I want to start by applauding Arts Council England for making the bold decision to open up its application process for the first time in more than 60 years.
This is a truly exciting time and practitioners seem genuinely energised and galvanised by it. An unprecedented level of soul-searching and hard-nosed business planning has led to a real shift in gear, direction and ambition for the sector. Many artists and unfunded companies feel they have everything to gain and are 100% up for it.
Having been given this strong incentive to raise their game and articulate their vision, these organisations will not turn back now. They know what they want to do and they are going to find a way of doing it - arts council or no arts council Last week, I facilitated an Independent Theatre Council artistic director’s forum - a diverse and highly vocal group driven by an insatiable energy for creating work, engaging audiences and ensuring a vibrant future for the arts. The mood of this group was intensified by its shared experience of facing massive change and transition.
Leaders of small venues, touring companies, regularly funded organisations and Arts Council National Portfolio hopefuls were preoccupied by the same issue: “What if the arts council gets it wrong on March 30? What would wrong look like?”
The new artistic director of Actors Touring Company, Ramin Gray, had this to say: “It’s thrilling that ACE is taking out the garden shears to do some radical topiary on the arts. This could be the moment for a powerful restatement of the idea of subsidy - to support work that may be in advance of public taste, that stretches, provokes and challenges and that would not otherwise be made.
“When cuts are being made as a direct result of the crisis in the capitalist system, it’s surely a chance to reframe our artistic economy away from the intense obsession with novelty, superficiality and disposability to a saner world of sustainability, depth and genuine exploration. Let’s hope those garden shears cut us through to an exciting new landscape.”
And if ACE’s decisions don’t help produce an exciting new landscape, what then? I fear a real crash in the morale of arts practitioners if, after all the excitement and expectation, the status quo is maintained with just a few token gestures to the ‘new and emerging’.
On Radio 4’s Today programme last week, I heard the Royal Shakespeare Company’s executive director Vikki Heywood challenging arts minister Ed Vaizey about the fate of the arts. She expressed the fear that smaller, non-building based companies would be hit hardest. I hope this was not an expression of prior knowledge on her part, but rather pessimism about ACE’s vision.
Personally, I remain cautiously optimistic that ACE is sincere about nurturing a broad arts ecology. But, my concern is that, in its desperate attempt to get the process right - transparent, robust, administratively unassailable - it might lose sight of the vision. A beautiful landscape is made up of many features, both large and small.
It would be sheer lunacy to focus the cuts on smaller organisations. Firstly, masses of them would have to be lost to make even a modest saving. Secondly, they are amazing value for money. I keep hearing ACE staff preparing the sector for disappointment, saying: “There is bound to be some potentially great work that we won’t be able to fund.” Why so defeatist? ACE has opened its doors to let great work in, so let it in.
At ITC’s conference last summer - entitled Evolve or Die - the artistic director of a newly-funded organisation said to me: “Do you think it would help if we approached ACE and offered to manage with less while working closely with a group of currently unfunded companies?”
This was not naivety, but a spirit of generosity and regard for the wider arts ecology that I often encounter among ITC’s membership. It inspires me and also gives rise to some dreams and hopes for the future of the sector.
Imagine this - quietly, in the last few months, the RSC and the Royal Opera House have approached ACE and said: “Listen chaps, we think we can manage with 50% less direct subsidy from you. We both have phenomenal international brands and we think we can rise to the challenge - with some advocacy back-up from you and the promised extra support from government - to raise the additional funds from philanthropic sources. After all, the shortfall only amounts to about half a dozen senior bankers’ bonuses each, and we think there must be plenty of embarrassed people in the City keen for the redemptive opportunity of supporting some top-class art.”
Something else has been playing on my mind recently - does the public actually realise that their taxes fund the arts? If they really appreciated this, what would they expect from the new landscape?
We pay for many things as taxpayers that we don’t directly benefit from. I, for one, am quite happy that my taxes pay for the lives of 5,000 schoolchildren in Birmingham to be enriched by the work of a company like Big Brum, or for ex-offenders to be offered new hope and opportunity by a company like Clean Break, or for Foursight, a small company in Wolverhampton, to create the extraordinary Thatcher the Musical!
But, as Foursight’s artistic director Sarah Thom said at our forum last week: “I fear that, due to the severity of the cut passed on to ACE by government, we are not in for a healthy pruning of the theatre portfolio, but a slash and burn with more than a quarter of existing companies up for the bonfire.”
Be brave, arts council. It is a huge responsibility, but the moment is yours. Make that landscape as rich as it can be.