Blog/31/12/10
Old Harry’s game
There was a cry a triumph when it was announced that the main clients of the Arts Council and the national museums had got away with only 15% cuts in the CSR, but this is no victory. The flagships will be all right, they have resources that will ensure their future, and they are mostly in London in the purview of ministers who won’t let them go down – although, as we saw before Christmas, even much-loved flagships can be towed to the breakers’ yards if that is the political will.
What is beyond the government line of sight is the arts in the communities up and down the country. The national companies will not be hit by local authority cuts, but the small companies are suffering, as we see in Somerset, Suffolk, Yorkshire and, yes, even London, from both Arts Council and local council cuts. It will not be in the box offices of West End theatres, museums, galleries and concert halls that the worst will be felt, but in the schools, community centres, local museums and town theatres, the very places where the arts have had the most plangent impact over the last ten years.
The arts will always happen, you can’t stop the creative process, but you can throttle the access to it by closing the galleries, theatres and halls that have been finding new audiences thanks to the funding enlightenment since 2000. That throttling is what is happening, with more and more closures being announced weekly.
And that is why it is so important that the flagships understand and honour their responsibilities beyond their own premises. The Tate’s Plus Tate, a scheme combining and sharing the work of 18 galleries up and down the country, and the Tate’s Artists’ Rooms with the Art Fund; the V&A’s operations in Dundee and Sheffield; the Royal Opera House’s adventure in Thurrock; the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre turning its face to the Stratford community – in every sense instead of away as the old one did. “A little touch of Harry in night”, you might say, and for the arts in communities up and down the country and England in particular, I am afraid it is going to be a long, long night.
