British Theatre Guide Blog

Well, not quite all but there are big changes at the top in the various Edinburgh Festivals.  Brian McMaster has gone from the EIF; Paul Gudgin is to leave the Fringe; Shane Danielson hasleft the Film Festival; Brigadier Melville Jameson is to leave as chief executive of the Tattoo, and Timothy Clifford has left his post as director general of the National Galleries of Scotland.

These departures follow the publication of the Thundering Hooves report on the position of Edinburgh as the international Festival City par excellence, published last spring. Not that I am suggesting that there is any connection between these facts, for there is no doubt that each of those who have departed or are about to do so have done an excellent job both for their individual organisations and for Edinburgh.

Gudgin, talking to The Scotsman, has made clear his strong belief that the Fringe needs more public investment.  It needs, he says, around £300,000 a year.  Currently it gets £65,000 from the City Council and the Scottish Arts Council, but SAC has cut its £25,000 grant, although the city council has promised an extra £50,000 over the next two years to make up for it.

The other problem, he says, is that Edinburgh’s infrastructure is near to breaking point during August.  The city needs, he estimates, some 5,000 extra beds - and they should be inexpensive ones.

Transport, too, needs attention.  FirstScotRail should run trains to the outlying areas into the early hours during August” and, he told The Scotsman, ”I would like to see some form of shuttle bus put on that would help encourage the growth of the Fringe down Leith Walk and into Leith, while people should be able to get the home at 1am and 2am during August, when the city is still buzzing at that time of night.”

But he is not the only one who has ideas about what is needed.  Assembly supremo Bill BUrdett-Coutts has already suggested a coming together of the EIF and the Fringe.

There is no doubt that something needs to be done if Edinburgh is to maintain its international pre-eminence as a festival city, particularly as it is likely to face increasing competition from within the UK as well as without.  The Manchester International Festival, soon to be upon us for the first time, may not provide an immediate threat, but it will grow, as we have seen the Brighton and Buxton Fringes grow in recent years.  And then there is Liverpool as the 2008 European City of Culture: surely that will provide some competition?

Interesting times.  Interesting times….

I learned today that the local authority funding for the Royal and Derngate in Northampton is under threat of cutting.  No decision has yet been made (it will be next month) but cutting £900,000 from their grant over the next three years is a possibility - and this after the council had invested £900,000 in the venue’s recent refurbishment.  And they’d only just announced part of their new season last week.

According to council officials, the cut is just one of a number being considered because the council has a £3m shortfall in its budget - just like Wandsworth Council has a £5m hole which they propose to lessen with, essentially, a £270,000 per annum cut in fuding to BAC.

Of course, at the moment councils throughout the UK are trying to set their budgets for the new financial year and I would imagine that every one of them has a shortfall, so we can expect more theatres to come under threat and certainly some of them will have to, at best, reduce their programmes or, at worst, close.

The situation is made worse by the fact that it is unlikely that ACE will be able to bale them out because, although we have no figures yet, a lot of Lottery money which would have come to ACE at regional level is likely to be taken to pay for the massive increase in the costs of the 2012 Olympics.

The Olympics, we are told, will be very profitable for Britain - but for who?  It certainly won’t be profitable for those organisations and companies which may be forced to close because of the unavailability of Lottery money, and it is highly unlikely that those who do manage to hang on by the skin of their teeth will get any benefit from the Games.

In the next couple of years, the arts are going to experience squeezes such as we have not seen since the days of the Thatcher government.  We need to protest loud and long, but we also need to steel ourselves for the effects, for let no one imagine that there will be a governmental change of heart in favour of all those organisations, arts and non-arts, which rely upon Lottery money.  Anyone remember the Millennium Dome?

The possible - probable? - closure of BAC is very worrying.  It’s not just the people of Wandsworth who should be worrying (and they very definitely should be, for BAC has been a major contributor to cultural and creative education in the borough’s schools) nor even just the theatre lovers of London, but the British theatre world in general.  BAC has been a significant, indeed a major force in experimental theatre in the UK and work that has been created and companies which have developed there have gone on to be very important to theatre throught the UK and beyond.  We have only to mention productions like Jerry Springer the Opera and companies like Frantic Assembly and Complicite to realise that.

What is particularly worrying is that Wandsworth is not a cash-strapped council in danger of being capped for overspending.  It has the lowest council tax in the UK (and for a London borough that is little short of amazing) and huge reserves.

It is quite clear that the council’s main priority seems to be to keep the council tax as low as possible.  That, of course, (as every council tax payer in the country will agree) not a bad thing, and councils which squander public money deserve to be attacked, but councils have a responsibility not only to provide basic services such as rubbish collection, transport, education, housing and care for the physical well-being of their constituents, but also for their cultural well-being.

The arts have always been dependent upon patronage: in Shakespeare’s day theatre companies belonged to royalty and aristocrats. The same aristocrats also supported musicians and artists, sculptors and poets.  In the 40s, with the foundation of the Arts Council of Great Britain, politicians recognised that, to keep access to the arts affordable for the ordinary person, an element of state subsidy was essential. Big corporations also recognised that it was in their interests (even if just in terms of taxation) to support the arts.

Then along came the Thatcher government which, with tax reducation as its main aim, cut public grants with the aim of transferring subsidy to business.  Organisations like Arts and Business became an important part of the arts funding mix.  But what the goverment did not realise was that, in general, business wants to be associated with success and would not wish to be linked with failure.  However to experiment is to risk failure.  It is also likely to court controversy - not something a business wants to have associated with its name. Witness how quickly the Carphone Warehouse suspended its sponsorship of Celebrity Big Brother when the racism row broke out.

So organisations like the National Theatre and the RSC will attract sponsors but those like BAC are very unlikely to have much appeal to business, at least to the extent of the help it has been receiving from Wandsworth. 

What is horrifying - because it suggests another agenda is at work here - is the fact that the subsidy (grant aid, rent and repairs) that BAC receives from the council amounts to 38p per person per year.  The centre estimates that its visitors spend £2m a year in the borough, money that will be lost to Wandsworth if it is forced to close.

So add it up:

• the cost to Wandsworth is £317,000 a year
• the gain is £2m a year
• that’s a profit of £1,683,000 (although, of course, it doesn’t go into the council’s coffers)

There is not to be any scaling down of the grant: it will stop dead in April, leaving the Centre less than two and a half months to find alternative funding.

Either Wandsworth Council simply hasn’t thought through the effects of what it proposes. Or it doesn’t care. Or the decision is not economic but political and has more to do with what BAC is and does. Perhaps having a successful experimental arts organisation in the borough doesn’t sit well with the local Tory party which runs the council. Or perhaps it’s just that the council loves being the council with the lowest council tax in the UK and can’t see beyond that.

Whatever the reason the arts world needs to fight them!

Last week we carried J D Atkinson’s review of Colorblind Shakespeare, a book on cross-race casting of Shakespeare’s plays.  On Sunday we ran an article on the case of Simone Clarke, the English National Ballet principal dancer outed as a member of the British National Party by The Guardian. Now in the last 24 hours the news has been dominated by the alleged racist abuse of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty on Big Brother, the Channel 4 “reality” TV show.

The latter is turning out to be an international incident, with protests in the streets of India and comment from Anand Sharma, India’s junior minister for external affairs.

I say “alleged racist abuse” because I have some doubt about whether or not the comments which I have heard - and I’ve only seen the news programmes: I haven’t actually watched BB itself - are racist.  They could certainly be construed that way.  What they undoubtedly are is abusive, unintelligent and bullying.

The thing is - as any secondary school teacher will tell you - this kind of thing is happening every day in schools throughout the country (and probably in workplaces too). The Jade Goodys of this world - not very intelligent, not very attractive, unable to relate to others except on the most basic of levels, scared of people who are different, having little feeling of self-worth and therefore aggressive in attempting to bolster what little they do have - need people they can despise and attack because it makes them feel good. The victim may be of a different race or colour, have different beliefs, come from a different class, be more intelligent or hardworking: it doesn’t really matter, so long as they are different and vulnerable.

They need their supporters.  Usually, because of their aggression, they have strong personalities and attract others who are weaker but have the same lack of self-confidence.  These suporters, like Danielle Lloyd and Jo O’Meara, follow the stronger’s lead.  It is, in fact, likely that if Jade Goody wasn’t there, they would behave in a totally different way towards Shilpa Shetty. Indeed, one of Lloyd’s friends, Leeandra Anderson who is of mixed race, told the BBC, “I’ve known Danielle for five years now and not once has she had a racist undertone in her voice, ever.”

If there is racism there, it is not an ideological racism: it’s the sort which arises from the need to have someone to look down upon, to claim is inferior to you, to despise so that you don’t have to despise yourself.  It’s the bullying reaction of the small-minded (in every sense).

Hopefully this is a wake-up call to those who promote (and those who are taken in by) the cult of celebrity!

 Blogging is taking over the world! 

 Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration but nowadays being interactive is the big thing, so who are we to stand in the way of progress?  From today - 15th January, 2007 - what appeared in the Articles section of the BTG as comment (as distinct from information) will now appear here and you’ll have the chance to make your own comments.  The other kind of feature article - the informative as distinct from the polemical - will continue to appear in the Articles section.

So, welcome!  I hope this proves to be a useful part of the BTG.

Peter