The winners and losers of today's big decisions, as we find out...
Read our summary of London's winners and losers
Funding Fallout - the Success Story, from UP Projects
After a series of what Arts Council chair, Dame Liz Forgan, described as "painful decisions", arts organisations up and down the country are finding out what the future looks like, as the Arts Council announce their funding decisions for the three years between 2012 and 2015. Last year the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced a 29.6% cut in funding for Arts Council England, although the pledge was always that administrative costs would be cut by 50% to ensure that so-called 'frontline' funding would only be reduced by 15%.
A total of 1,333 arts organisations have applied for funding, but only 695 organisations will receive money of some kind, significantly down on pre-announcement predictions. The full announcement was be made at 10am today, and we'll continue to keep you updated.
The main points are as follows:
- * 206 organisations across the UK have had their funding cut.
- * £18 million of Lottery funds will go to touring projects, in line with the 'Achieving great art for everyone' slogan.
- * £10.5 million of Lottery money will support children and young people.
In London:
- * Previously London had 277 organisations on the National portfolio. This has now fallen to 250. This includes 34 newcomers, such as auto-italia and Streetwise Opera.
- * There's a focus on the Olympics, which is rather depressing - the Barbican for example have had a whopping increase of 108% "allowing it to work across all the Olympic boroughs".
Increased funding goes to: South London Gallery (up a massive 107%), Stratford Circus Limited (even more!), Chisenhale Gallery, Cubitt, Cafe Gallery, Matt’s Gallery, the Serpentine Gallery, the Whitechapel Gallery and Camden Arts Centre.
Experimental theatre is doing well, with Punchdrunk getting an increase, and Blind Summit and Coney being added to the portfolio. Arcola Theatre is also up 82.1%
We're also pleased for artsdepot, who're getting £300,000 in 2012 with inflationary increases until 2015. We were worried for the Finchley venue in December when Barnet Council decided to cut all their funding, so it's nice to see ACE stepping in to the right place at the right time.
Losers so far include Almeida Theatre (down 39%), English National Ballet (down 15%), English National Orchestra (down 11%), Royal Opera (down 15%), National Theatre (down 14.9%). The ICA is also down 42%, whilst wicked physical theatre company Shared Experience had their funding cut completely.
Nancy Meckler and Polly Teale, Co-Artistic Directors of Shared Experience have made the following comment:
“We are shocked and disappointed to hear that we will receive no National Portfolio Funding from 2012 – 2015. We feel strongly our work delivers the Arts Council’s goals and we are devastated by their decision.”
Another unsuccessful application was that of ArtSway, a rural, contemporary visual arts venue based in New Forest. They have said: “Despite the assessment which stated that "ArtSway met Arts Council goals...." ArtSway will not receive any funding from April 2012 as "...other visual arts organisations were preferred when balancing artform and geographic provision".”
From Twitter
@crystalbennes Art Monthly gets £30-40k per year with a circulation of 5,000. Hmmmm... #artsfunding
@exitthelemming To put this £100m Arts Council cut into context, 206 organisations have
lost funding today for the cost of two Apache attack helicopters.
@Manthorp The Nigerian Arts Council has just offered me $5,000,000 NPO support. They just need my account details. #acefunding
@lyngardner The devil will be in the detail and the funding agreements hammered out between NPOs and ACE over next year. #ACEfunding
@Whatsonstage NT's Nicholas Hytner: "Jeremy Hunt... promised us he intended to preside over a golden age for the arts. Dream on." #artsfunding
And as ever Cathedral of Shit has some incisive comments on the whole thing - particular the phasing out of 'diversity' as a trendy buzzword.
One key issue before the announcement were whether the decisions would widen the division between the big-hitters (The Royal Opera House got £26.3 million in the 2011/12 settlement, the Southbank Centre £19.3 million, and the National Theatre £18.3 million) and the small, fringe, and regional operations. All of these have had their funding cut, although not by that much, so it looks like ACE's 'strategic cuts' have been fairly logical so far.
We're also going to be running a series of hard-hitting opinion pieces in the coming days, so keep your eyes open.
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