Bad News at Christmas
There’s been a lot of bad news recently: theatres closing (Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree last week) and this week withdrawal of grants from the very troubled Derby Playhouse, the National Student Drama Festival and the Northcott in Exeter and a major cut in the grant to Eastern Angles.
In terms of funding, we can probably expect more of the same in the weeks to come as Arts Council England’s regional offices decide their funding priorities for another three years. Inevitably there will be uproar, protests and petitions. Jobs will be lost and local people up in arms. And what will make it harder to bear is the fact that the arts fared much better than expected in the Comprehensive Spending Review. “If you’ve got more money, why should we be cut?” will be the cry.
And it is a very understandable cry, but it would be a mistake to lump all the cuts and closures together If we are honest - and that can sometimes be hard to be if you are involved - there are times when grant cuts are justifiable. If a company or theatre is not reaching the standards expected and other unfunded groups in a region are, it surely makes sense to move the what is after all a limited amount of money to where it will do most good. It’s hard on those who are employed in the affected organisations and also on their loyal audiences, but there are winners as well as losers. It’s not as if the money is vanishing.
But ACE is a bureaucratic organisation and bureaucratic organisations can make mistakes, so their decisions must be carefully scrutinised to make sure they are soundly based. And the decision making process must be totally transparent. What are the criteria against which the affected organisations are being judged and how fairly are they being applied? How well do the officers really know the organisation and its work? How often have they visited? How often have they attended board meetings? Is the decision made on the basis of a thorough direct knowledge of the theatre/company or is it founded on paper? And if there is sufficient concern for an organisation to be in danger of losing its grant aid, have those concerns been raised with it and has it been given time to respond? If the concerns appear for the first time in the letter detailing the proposed cut, then any organisation so affected is entitled to protest loud and long - and to be heard.
This kind of redistribution of grant aid is inevitable and probably in the long run healthy for theatre, but it must be done properly. If it isn’t, then the guilty heads at ACE should roll - after all, they are dealing with the livelihoods of other people. It is appropriate at Christmas time to insist on strict adherence to the dictum that what is sauce for the goose should also be sauce for the gander.