Blog/15/7/10

‘Cut us, don’t kill us’ plea as 40% cuts loom
The arts are being told to expect cuts of 25% to 40% which will mean ACE funding to 200 of its 880 RFOs being stopped altogether.

Cultural leaders led by the Tate’s Sir Nicholas Serota have made an unprecedented plea to the government not to ‘front load’ the cuts but to be given time for them to worked in. ‘You can cut us, but don’t kill us’ was their bleak plea this morning.

They have days to make their case, Serota said, with culture secretary Jeremy Hunt wanting to make an early Comprehensive Spending Review settlement with the Treasury for 2011-2014.

As it is, theatres are likely to go dark, museums to close for some days a week, new work commissions to cease and the arts’ contribution to urban regeneration wound down. The regions, less attractive to philanthropy and tourism than London and trebly bitten by loss of support from local authorities and from the abolished regional development boards, will fare the worst with companies and venues closing, never to reopen.

The Arts Council have told clients this week that even if the cuts are not imposed in full immediately, they can expect at least 10% cuts in 2011-12, twice as bad as their worst guess. In his letter to them, ACE chief executive Alan Davey said he will ‘argue that any cut needs to be managed intelligently and in a way that protects the achievements of the last 15 years. We need to be sure that any cuts we do get do not all take place in the first year of a four-year cycle. That would be doubly damaging’.

Nor will there be respite in philanthropic giving which the government puts great store by. It emerged this morning that leading philanthropists, including Sir John Ritblat, Anthony D’Offay, Lord Stevenson, Dr Keith Howard (a long-standing supporter of Opera North) and Terry Bramall, the millionaire builder, have written to Hunt to say giving cannot be expected to make god subsidy shortfalls. Dame Vivien Duffield is believed to be writing separately to the same effect. ‘Philanthropic giving is very carefully balanced’ said Julia Peyton-Jones of the Serpentine Gallery. ‘This money is freely given and can just as freely be taken away’.

Jude Kelly of the Southbank Centre said that the cultural offer was a vital part of the bid that won the 2012 Olympics for London, having impressed the IOC ‘in terms of the scale of it, the vibrancy, the outstanding quality, and the models whereby world class art links up with education and communities in a way that has taken many years to build’ she said. ‘To then be ravaged by cuts will make us unable to deliver all the things we said we would do’.

The arts have become essential to regional revival, said Vikki Heywood of the RSC. Based in Stratford, she said that the company is worth £58m to the economy of the West Midlands, and will be worth a lot more when their new theatre opens at the end of the year, but the cuts would reverse that.

Sadler’s Wells has become the national dance theatre but, said Alastair Spalding, the commissions, productions and off-site performances which have turned round its finances and reputation will stop.

Serota said he had been in Liverpool yesterday to accept the freedom of the City on behalf of Tate Liverpool. ‘It means we can herd sheep past the council offices, and if we were military to march through the city with drums playing and bayonets fixed’ he said. ‘We will not be fixing bayonets. Not yet’.