Missing the point of the Arts Council
The smugly self-justifying Arts Council chairman Christopher Frayling was well and truly kebabed by Quentin Letts on a Radio 4 programme today asking “what is the point of the Arts Council”?
He wriggled around when asked about applicants having to declare their sexuality for a grant, then changed the subject, or tried to. Mind you, Letts — who sounds just like Billy Bunter — fatally weakened his own antipathy towards state funding for the arts by seeming to hold up the Menier Chocolate Factory as an example of how to do perfectly well without taxpayers’ contributions.
The Menier has bought into, and sold out to, a Broadway ethos of theatre, and plows that furrow very well indeed without any concept of civic responsibility beyond giving an audience a good time. David Babani’s policy has little to do with radically new work or future audiences or anything, really, beyond a New York idea of musical theatre showbiz, and Stephen Sondheim.
Which is lovely. But even the Menier only prospers with the talents of people who have learned their trade in the subsidised sector, and the same is certainly true of the West End.
What is needed, as Letts almost implied, is a complete overhaul, a cut back on waste and over-staffing and a reappraisal of what public money is actually for. I would like to see the Arts Council, for instance, insist that no seat at the National or the RSC should cost more than £20. The Royal Court should have a top price ticket of £15.
Part of the problem is that public money has become too much tied up with sponsorhip, so that it is no longer possible to define exactly what the taxpayer is funding; our money just goes into one great pot.
We can blame Margaret Thatcher for this, and also the eagerness with which the theatre world — and practitioners like Stephen Daldry and Trevor Nunn – embraced the mixed economy as a defence against penury. Major Barbara speaks to us precisely on the moral issue of “clean” money…is there any such thing, we could now ask, even in taxes?
Frayling muttered something tokenist about getting a few more professionals involved in Arts Council deliberations. His time in office has seen a disastrous decline in the public esteem in which the Arts Council is held, and his departure should provoke a radical re-think and some heavyweight appointments to clarify precisely the importance of what the Arts Council does and should do.
Letts’s programme reflected a continuing queasiness with public funding for the arts that we just don’t seem able to get over, and no thanks to the politicians. But it’s quite simple, really. The arts, like health and education, have to be paid for.
Can’t we all agree at this late stage that we want the arts in our lives without regarding artists themselves as suspicious con-men or pampered luvvies, or elitist metropolitans, or whatever other label the Quentin Letts’s of this world see fit to stick on them?
It’s the bureaucrats and the middle management who need sorting out. The Frayling factor, in fact. There is no future for the theatre without public funding, but it’s about time we called a thorough audit on the books and the business practices, and purged the system of political correctness and dubious social engineering.
March 26th, 2008 at 12:26 am
Well said ! But what can be done when it is the bureacrats and the middle management who cling to the theatre like the proverbial shit to the blanket ? The battle between the artists and the beaurocrats fought in the mid 90ties has long been won by the latter and it is they who now run most of our regional theatres having appropriated for themselves executive artistic positions Bureaucrats and middle-managers like Patrick Gilchrist or Sarah Holmes, to mention only those I know from my own experience at Theatr Clwyd, are now firmly enscosed as artistic executives in theatres like the Century in Keswick and Wolsley in Ipswich .Sheffield, Derby and Colchester are also ran by people whose background is in administration. Isn’t that the cause of the lowering of standarts and aspirations ? Isn’t that why, with few exceptions gray mediocrity dominates whatever remains of regional theatres ? There is no scrutiny because the papers seldom review their work , certainly not the national papers who seem to care neither about preserving the standards of the theatre nor preseving the critics.
March 29th, 2008 at 6:55 am
There are only two valid criteria for funding and they are quality and access; anything else is misguided and patronising. When I got out of my pram at the closure of the un-funded Bridewell, I looked at the complete list of AC funded organisations in London and found it riddled with preposterous politically correct grants for things such as the promotion og Brasilian crafts! It certainly is time for an overhaul when premiere league organisations like The Bush are threatened.
March 30th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Not sure whether its worth dignifying Helena’s rant with a response… but soddit. Theatres of course should be led by their art, but given that they are often large and complex organisations, artistic directors do not always have the right skills to be ultimately responsible for them. So, those of us who are called executive directors, executive producers, administrative directors, whatever, often need to have a major role in getting these theatres to work. Sometimes this involves being ultimately responsible, sometimes being jointly responsible, sometimes being a no 2 to the artistic director: how this is decided is often a response to all sorts of pressures and situations: and in fact all the theatres that Helena mentions have very different reasons for having a non-artistic director with ultimate responsibility. What I would absolutely refute is that we are middle managers and bureaucrats, especially if that means direct comparison with Arts Council officers. Most of us HATE bureacracy (and aren’t that keen on the Arts Council) - what we want to do is use our skills and experience to make our theatres thrive.