'Cut Us, Don't Kill Us'

The publicly funded arts are being asked to model 25 - 30 % cuts, Arts Council England talks of losing 200 organisations from its portfolio. 

The message is very simple - small amounts of public money work hard and stimulate a mixed economy, culture that is admired the world over and delivers a real return for the country in economic terms, and in terms of the kind of society we want to be -and indeed as pointed out by Andrew Motion fits the Government's Big Society vision. 

Midst rumours that Jeremy Hunt will settle early with Treasury, there has been a concerted effort to draw public and political attention to  the lasting, irreparable  damage that deep cuts will make, especially if 'frontloaded' at the beginning of the four years rather than after 2012 when Lottery funds should kick in.

An Arts Council Engalnd press release makes it clear. "While the cultural sector is willing to play its part in the country's economic recovery with realistic cuts, the 25 per cent to 40 per cent cuts being proposed would be catastrophic as they come on top of 3.5 per cent cuts this year as well as the cultural sector's £322 million contribution to the costs of the Olympics." ...." the cumulative effect of these cuts could lead to the closure or partial closure of leading national museums, galleries and theatres, as well as of many arts organisations across the country. This would reverse the gains that have been made since 1992 in the international standing of the UK's cultural organisations, leading to the loss of irreplaceable expertise, and for a generation of children and young people much diminished access to their culture and heritage."  

Philanthropy is welcomed and highly valued but it cannot fill the gap in the immediate term, or indeed without added tax incentives. Outside London sponsorship remains infrequent and of lower value.

In the US "the Obama administration recognised the important contribution of culture to the country's economic recovery and increased the arts budget. New York's City Council also recently reversed its cut in arts funding because they are 'an important source of money for the city through tourism and contribute to the public's quality of life.' In Canada, a recent submission of proposed cuts by the Canada Council asked for by the Canadian Treasury Department were rejected as these programmes were thought to be crucial to Canada's national prosperity."

Nicholas Serota  on Radio 4s PM programme ( 15.07; 14.20 min)  clearly articulated  the need to consider carefully the scale and the timing of the cuts and the likely impact across the country. Philanthropists, he said, want to be associated with success.

Nicholas Hytner in The Times (16.07) describes how "Swingeing cuts in the arts would hit smaller and regional institutions hardest. Many of them would simply close. The immediate impact would be on the communities they serve," but the impact on the national institutions would follow swiftly. The smaller, often regional venues are the engine rooms that drive creativity and it "is exactly this expertise, this creative confidence, that has ensured that the creative economy has been the only part of the wider economy to flourish and grow during the past few years."

"At a meeting at the Treasury last week, the Chancellor acknowledged that the creative sector is now as large as the financial sector. It cannot have escaped his notice that it has given him and his predecessors considerably less of a headache. It is our creative economy that is genuinely still a world-beater, and at its centre is the network of publicly subsided institutions that are its engine room........ Although we may be no smaller than the financial sector, there is no risk that we will bring the rest of the economy down, and every hope that we can be in the vanguard of the recovery."