The Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition’s decision to cut all, except essential services, public funding by 10%, within the first 4 weeks of their parliamentary term has caused many changes to take place across the nation’s landscape. This is very apparent in the arts and culture sector. The Find Your Talent programme was cancelled with immediate affect. Thereby cancelling the whole of all of the 10 pathfinder’s 3rd year programmes. This meant that thousands of young people would now not be able to partake in cultural activities planned for that third year. Interaction with leading arts organisations was stopped suddenly. Smaller organisations lost a large percentage of their revenue, resulting in staff being laid off and the cultural landscape in these pathfinder regions becoming a barren land that was four weeks before a hive of the future cultural leaders of our country and outstanding community examples to other young people.
With the announcement that Arts Council England will be forced to make a further 10% cut of all regularly funded organisations this will see those organisations already badly affected by the Find your Talent cancellation, going out of business. Early estimates suggest across England 20% of Arts Organisations will no longer be able to function and will go to the wall by the end of 2011. This will undoubtedly affect not just financially the country, (According to DCMS 2009 figures for every £1 spent on the arts this brings £2 back into the English economy), but also intrinsically the people of the country will be undoubtedly affected by the lack of a strong, diverse and participatory arts scene.
Is this a time to worry though? The Arts will go through a tough time in the next 4 years and we may see some of our favourite organisations cease to exist. But we have been here before. In the 1980’s the arts landscape had it’s heart ripped from it’s cultural centre and a whole generation of audience was lost to TV, video games, anti-social behaviour and drugs and drinking.
Over the last 15 years we have been investing in the next generation and the trying to convince the current generation to come and experience culture in its many different forms. One can only hop that arts organisations and those large organisations certainly, have been building for a situation like this to arise. It was inevitable that the apparent land of milk and honey funding that we have had since 1997 wouldn’t last, and it would be sad to think people were blinkered and had not planned for change.
My fear is this hasn’t happened across the board and some organisations have had the philosophy that it is a given right they should be funded by the state. Whoever that state is. But I believe it isn’t a given right. You have to have a purpose and matter to your community and your practitioners to be entitled to funding. If you are having a positive impact on them then you should be funded. If you are carrying on expecting funding and not advancing your art or work then you don’t deserve to be kept like a French mistress.
One can only hope the coalition, once it deconstructs our systems, starts to rebuild with legacy and independence, realistic independence, at its heart. Lets hope our Arts Organisations understands that change is a good thing and works positively to make our Arts Landscape carry on being one of the best in world.
I've always believed that being reliant on one source of centrally based funding is a very risky thing. It can also make an organisation complacent, stagnant and potentially unimaginative. I’m hoping that the positive outcome of the coalitions slash and burn approach will encourage these organisations to look at, say other sources including European initiatives, to evaluate what they have to offer (dare I say how to market themselves). There has already been some tremendous work carried out and it’s working out a balance between an environment of competition and collaboration which up to a point already exists. No matter what the government tells us, they are creating a wider chasm between the haves and have not’s and it’s up to those organisations that work with communities to give a voice to the unheard and forgotten to ask themselves what they need to do to survive.
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