3% funding cut

I'm all for schools and hospitals but I worry that the Murdock's and Farage's of the world want to have a bland environment of chain stores and sky to so we can't be enlightened

It's staggering that in these days of cut backs everywhere, not just the arts and public services, the government can find £1 BILLION pounds to save their necks in parliament.

Arts funding makes money. Every pound invested in the arts makes something like £4 back. Arts cuts cost money, they don't save money. Cutting arts funding doesn't mean more funding is freed up to suddenly build hospitals and things like that. Anyway the government fritters literally billions of pounds on waste, mismanagement and cronyism (not to mention unnecessary or dubious big ticket projects) and there's never any suggestion of trying to cut corners there. But a little bit of money to the arts, or a disabled person's extra tenner a week? Snatch that back.

Awfully bad timing.

Also re: arts council specifically only the portfolio comes out of government money all the other grants are lottery funded.

So as less people by tickets less there is in the other pot.

Also Scotland Wales and NI come out of their own (smaller) Arts Council and lottery pots.
(The way the lottery allocation is made is nerdily interesting, government spending erm less so)

This has changed now. Some NPO funding is from Grant In Aid and some is from Lottery. There's a column on ACE's spreadsheet which shows which is which.

I don't know the exact ins and outs as re differ across all the Arts councils....

But thanks for mansplaining my ACTUAL job to me.

I appreciate it.

14% cut for Hampstead, which they are not happy about

www.hampsteadtheatre.com/news/2017/june/edward-hall-and-greg-ripley-duggans-statement-on-todays-arts-council-announcement/

Don't forget this one too

www.hampsteadtheatre.com/news/2012/04/creative-learning-announces-closure/

It's ok, we can all climb aboard the HS2 to get to the theatres oop north. Seriously, I too agree we need hospitals and schools etc above the arts just now but the pot isn't being transferred but redistributed, so RSC gets less and a smaller organisation gets some or more than it had before. I think it is a shame to penalise Hampstead which is doing ok at the moment and promising with new writing and good audiences. I don't know exactly what they mean by diversity though I have my suspicions; if a lack of it is what has affected Hampstead then I am very disappointed. In my experience, Hampstead serves the community around it and brings in from further afield. Incidentally, I went to the Arcola recently and the audience looked pretty much the same as it does at Hampstead, at the NT and the RSC but I expect they can claim diversity because hey, I was a punter.

All the applicants to ACE for NPO status are fully aware of the strategies concerning diversity, and they are required to supply detailed information in their application and are subject to regular detailed monitoring. It's not only diversity of audience but also within the staff and Board of each organisation, and all the other theatre-makers who they work with. If an applicant chooses to ignore the priorities of ACE, they should not expect to be rewarded! The published response by Hampstead Theatre seems to imply a sene of entitlement and working to their own priorities without reference to those of the funding body.

Another factor which seems glaringly obvious to me, although I admit that I don't know if it influenced the funding decision, is that virtually every other NPO producing venue now routinely co-produces with other venues and/or with non-building-based thaetre companies. This shares production costs and risk, and so saves money, and it also helps to open up the organisation to the rest of the world. However, Hampstead's main theatre produces a stream of its own productions, all running for a scheduled few weeks before expiring. This is an expensive production model which almost everyone else has moved away from. In Hampstead's response, there's no suggestion of considering how to reduce costs like every other theatre has done - compare with the Orange Tree's response to withdrawn funding - but a blind desire to carry on regardless.