British Theatre Guide Blog

13,630,810 attendances, £469,729,135 in box office takings and a VAT contribution of £70m: that’s a pretty good record for one year’s work. That is what the members of the Society of London Theatre did in 2007.  Now add in all the takings from other London venues (unknown, alas) and the additional spend that goes with theatregoing - travel, meals and so on - and you can see why theatre is a major contributor to the capital’s economy.

Now add in the box office receipts and additional spend associated with theatregoing throughout the UK (again, the figures are unknown - to me, at any rate), and, in spite of the howls of protest from the philistines who scream whenever public subsidy is mentioned,  it is perfectly obvious that theatre is a major net contributor to Britain’s economy.

(Proof?  in the financial year in question, ACE paid out £46,981,038 in grants to Regularly Funded Organisations and in Grants for the Arts, which are Lottery funded,  for one-off projects.  That leaves £23,018,962 out of the VAT that SOLT members paid.  OK, we have to take into account local authority support for theatre throughout the country, but if we do that we have to factor in the VAT paid by these theatres - and, of course, the rates, income tax on theatre workers’ salaries and other associated taxation.  No matter how you look at it, the taxpayers get a good deal from theatre subsidy.)

We should celebrate that more than we do.

What does not surprise me is the fact that just under three million (21.6%) of those attending went to see plays as distinct from musicals.  As an aside, a significant proportion of the 2.95m playgoers (722,000 - just a smidgeon under a quarter) were at the National Theatre alone. 

But back to musicals. One only has to look at what is playing in the West End at any one time to see how huge a part of what is on offer musicals are. It would be interesting to compare similar figures from across the country, but I am sure that musicals would still hold the top spot.  And I suspect it will always be so.  Part of the reason, of course, is that musicals are the “feel good” shows par excellence, but there is also the fact that (the big) musicals are spectacle and people love spectacle.  They also appeal to a wider range of people, if only because of the fact that they include so much: songs, dance, acting, comedy, often spectacular sets and costumes. 

Just as a matter of interest, I decided to compare attendances at premier league football games for the same period. Trying to compare (as far as it is possible) like with like, I took into account just the London clubs, and their attendance was 41,88,835 (less than a third of those who attend theatre).  The figures aren’t really comparable, of course, as there are far too many variables and it’s also pretty irrelevant, but it’s interesting to look at the figures all the same.

Yes, I know - I’m rambling.  But it’s so nice to have the chance to do so on a happy subject after a few weeks of the doom and gloom engendered by the ACE funding cuts!

Today is the last day for those organisations affected by the ACE cuts to submit their appeals.  From now on, it’s up to Arts Council.

Or is it?  We’ve reached a situation where both sides are so entrenched that it seems unlikely that anyone will budge.  OK, ACE may make a few concessions - the Bush, for example - but for it to do anything else than to inker with its plans would be to admit it is wrong and there is nothing bureaucrats hate more than admitting to error. 

Some organisations have already accepted the situation - they’re the ones we haven’t heard from - but most are firm in the opposition and some will go ahead with plans for a legal challenge. But if that happens ACE has already said that, when it wins as it is sure it will, it will claim costs, thus making the organisation which it has already deprived of funds pay out more.  Whilst that is undoubtedly legally correct, it would be another PR own goal.

The relationship between ACE and its clients, especially in the theatre world, has never been worse, and even though there are undoubtedly some of its decisions which are perfectly justified, nothing short of stopping the cuts and going through a much more transparent process will restore confidence.  But that would be to admit it was wrong, and that seems highly unlikely, to say the least.

Time for adjudication!  Time, in fact, for culture secretary James Purnell to step in and sort out the mess.  For him not to do so would be a gross dereliction of duty.  He is responsible for the health of the cultural sector and the paymaster of ACE.  He has a duty to both sides in the dispute and it is also incumbent upon him, as a minister of the crown, to ensure that the workings of government and of government-funded quangos are transparent and fair. If he fails to intervene, he will lose all credibility in the eyes of the arts world, and with an Arts Council and a minister lacking the respect and trust of the sector, the arts in England will be in a very parlous state indeed.

Over to you, minister!

What a breath of fresh air Brian McMaster’s Review is! (See our summary)  The title says it all really: Supporting excellence in the arts - from measurement to judgement. 

For far too long the arts have been weighed down under tons of  priorities and targets which must be met to get funding. The quality of the work - McMaster’s excellence - has been forgotten in the indecent haste to follow slavishly every government “initiative” (access, diversity, inclusion, etc. etc. etc.)  and to set “measurable” targets (”How many people will take part?” or  ”How many target groups will be reached?” rather than “Is it good?”). 

Now McMaster, with the support - God bless him! - of Culture Secretary James Purnell, had redressed the balance and is proposing putting the pursuit of artistic excellence at the centre - a place from which it should never, ever have been moved.  It says much about the organisation’s utter lack of understanding of what the arts are about that ACE has allowed itself to be led down the social engineering/target setting road with nary a squeak of protest.

“It is,” Purnell said in his introduction to the Review, “time to trust our artists and our organisations to do what they do best - to create the most excellent work they can - and to strive for what is new and exciting, rather than what is safe and comfortable. To do this we must free artists and cultural organisations from outdated structures and burdensome targets, which can act as millstones around the neck of creativity.”

If I had an order paper, I would wave it in the air and shout, “Hear, hear!”

One is tempted to wonder if the bureaucrats in Great Peter Street knew what McMaster was going to say - and how could they not?  He is, after all, a member of the Council of ACE) - and decided to rush their “reforms” through before his Review was published.  If so, they miscalculated badly. 

They cannot (surely? If they did, why go ahead?) have foreseen the furore their proposals would cause. Protests not just from the affected organisations but from theatregoers, Equity, the Theatres Trust, theatre journalists, Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and all have now been added to by the Conservative Party. Tory culture minister Ed Vaizey said today, making a very pertinent point,  “It is astonishing that the Arts Council was allowed to proceed with cuts before the publication of the McMaster Report.”

He went on to say, “It is completely unacceptable to carry out the biggest cull of arts organisations in history in just six weeks. With the current chief executive leaving in a month, the head of the London arts council already gone, and the new chief executive on holiday in Mexico, arts organisations are entitled to ask who is making these decisions.”

And, we might add, deciding on the timing. 

ACE must cancel the cuts, reinstate the status quo for the time being, give those companies which are genuinely not achieving the chance to put things right, and revisit its whole method of deciding upon who gets what on the basis laid down by McMaster.  If that means we have to wait another year for any changes, so be it. 

And for goodness sake, let’s have some genuine artists at the core of the funding decision making rather than bean-counting, target-setting, social-engineering bureaucrats.

In September 2000, Jo Weston, then chief executive of Arts Council Wales, resigned, following uproar in the Welsh arts world over a string of proposals which showed that the organisation was totally out of touch with the sector it was supposed to serve.  In a feature article at that time, the BTG said, “The organisation has so badly misjudged the mood of the arts community in Wales and has acted with such arrogance that its position and that of Weston have become almost untenable. Hence … Weston’s resignation.”

Some six years later the Welsh Assembly Government - and, in particular, the then Culture Minister Alun Pugh - made the same mistake, in the process sacking the very popular Geraint Talfan Davies as chair of the Arts Council of Wales.  The proposals were defeated in the Assembly and, after a “decent” interval, Alun Pugh lost his job.

If we don’t learn from history, then we are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past, as Arts Council England is in the process of finding out at the moment.  Chief exec Peter Hewitt won’t be forced to resign because he’s going anyway after ten years at the helm, but the organisation is bound to suffer.

Enough press releases to destroy a small forest, protesting websites springing up all over the place, a petition of no confidence on the government’s e-petitions website, a threat of legal action because of the allegation that ACE is not following its own procedures, a hastily-arranged public meeting between Hewitt and members of Equity, and that’s probably the tip of the iceberg, as I suspect there’s an awful lot more going on behind the scenes.

ACE officers I have spoken to (not for publication) are very much on the defensive, stressing that these are just proposals and they may not be implemented.  “They have the right to put their case and be listened to,” one told me.  Tell that to the staff of the Drill Hall who have already lost their jobs!

Now I am willing to admit that probably a few of the organisations which are to be cut are not really delivering as they should, but have they been told this and given the help they need to put things right, which is what ACE’s own guidelines say should happen?

What is obvious, however, is that this is a PR disaster of major proportions which suggests that ACE, like ACW in 2000 and WAG two years ago, is totally out of touch with its constituency and the major fall-out will be, as the e-petition suggests, a loss of confidence in ACE.

In that Power to the People! article mentioned above, we wrote, “In 1997, this site carried five feature articles which were intensely critical of ACE. There were three in 1998, one last year and none so far in 2000. Why? Have I stopped writing critical pieces because I have become softer? No. It’s because ACE has changed radically, become more responsive and in touch with the reality of the arts world, and that change was forced upon it by pressure from the English arts community.”

It’s drifted away again, though, and one of the reasons is that the influence of practitioners has declined and that of administrators has increased.  ACE has adopted the management ethos and quality has been replaced by quantity (of the number of “priority” boxes ticked) as the major yardstick in making funding decisions.

Since this was written a few hours ago, we have received news of the meeting between Equity members and Peter Hewitt at the Young Vic at which the 500 or so members present passed a vote of no confidence in ACE.  Peter Hewitt responded by saying, “”We do not feel they (those present) are representative of the theatre community as a whole and most certainly not the wider arts community.”  He went on to say that it must be remembered that 75% of RFOs are getting an inflation or above increase.

Oh dear!  Another gigantic PR error!  Does he really think that everyone else will adopt an “I’m all right, Jack” attitude?  Surely he can’t be that dumb?  Almost 200 organisations have been cut without warning, without adequate explanation and given only a few weeks to respond: the rest are more likely to think “It could be us next time” than to dismiss the cuts as irrelevant to them.  And this has happened at a time when ACE has actually got more money than expected from central government!

This kind of comment only illustrates how divorced from the reality of the arts world ACE has become.  It’s as well that Hewitt is going, for if he were staying the chances of ACE recovering the trust of the theatre world, at any rate, would be nil.

One hopes that the furore which has erupted over what has been called the most bloody cull in Arts Council history will teach ACE a much needed lesson and that new chief exec Alan Davey will be able to get the arts world behind him and his organisation again so they can work together for the good of the arts in England rather than being at each others’ throats.

So, the Bush is the latest to announce that it faces having its grant cut - by 37.5% - not because of concerns about the quality of its productions but because it is too small as it only has 80 seats. 

No mention of the numerous West End transfers and tours which have originated there over the years (Elling and Whipping It Up last year, for example), nor of the major theatrical figures - writers, actors, directors - who have started their careers there.  No, it’s all down to size, the number of bums it is able to put on seats.

What on earth is going on at ACE?  Has quality ceased to be a criterion for grants?  Some companies which have been threatened with cuts say that they have never had a representative from the regional office at any of their productions, so how can the quality of their work be judged?

The answer, of course, is that it can’t be.  And it is hardly surprising because the number of arts specialists at ACE, regionally certainly but most particularly in Great Peter Street, is smaller than ever before.  More and more ACE staff are admin or management types.  I am reminded of something I was told by a hospital consultant a few years ago.  Financial pressures were forcing him to cancel non-urgent surgery and treatments but there was nonetheless enough money for a revamp of the boardroom which cost in excess of £10,000.

In an article on the Stage website, published today, Ian Herbert, who used to edit Theatre Record, compares ACE as it is now and as it was in 1997.  It makes for very illuminating reading.  Arts Council, he says, “makes policy, a month before (Brian) McMaster tells us what it is, by sending out unexplained dismissal notices to a list it will not disclose.”  It’s an article everyone who is concerned about theatre should read - and be scared by!

Also in the last couple of days, Peter Hewitt, who is stepping down as ACE’s chief exec, has defended the cuts and the short time given for appeal by saying that it will “enable us to get the best value for our audiences from our investments over the full term of the three-year funding cycle.”

As anyone who has worked in local government (where it has been a sacred cow for some time) will tell you, “best value” is a matter of ticking boxes and meeting “priorities”, priorities which are far too often set not by the people on the ground who have to deliver but by the administrators who like things which are quantifiable - not “was this a good play?” but “did it increase the audience by a measurable percentage?” - or even by central government - does it, for example, promote inclusiveness?

In an article which I wrote back in 1999 which touched on funding issues, I quoted the then president of the TMA, Barbara Matthews, who said something which is just as true (if not more so) now as it was then: “Theatres must have the freedom and confidence to experiment with work of quality - to do what they do best rather than operate within a bureaucratic nightmare.”

When will they ever learn?

Yes, it’s that time of year, the time when the Inland Revenue starts nagging that you have until 31st January to complete your tax  return online (and pay what you owe) or they’ll send the boys round with baseball bats to squash vital and delicate parts of your anatomy.

(In fact, what they actually say is you’ll have to pay loadsamoney extra but, when you get to my age, that’s almost as painful as having those vital and delicate parts squashed.)

 We all hate paying taxes but we all also want government to spend money on what we think is important and, as the old song goes, you can’t have one without the other.  So really I ought not to complain but pay up with a cheerful smile on my face and a song in my heart, knowing I’m doing my bit to keep good old Britain rolling along.  Who knows?  My little contribution might be just the bit that helps fund an earth-shatteringly brilliant piece of new theatre or buys a hundredth of a square  inch of a new lane of an already overcrowded motorway.  Or perhaps it might pay a tiny fraction of MP Boris Johnson’s salary.  (Would that we could stipulate that our money is not used for such wasteful purposes!  But I suppose medieval kings used tax money to pay their court jesters, so…)

Actually, what annoys me about taxation is not having to pay taxes (alright, it does annoy me, but I accept they’re necessary) but the condescension of government ministers when they tell us that they are giving an extra £Xm to the NHS or £Ym to education, as if they are putting their hands into their own pockets.  They’re not.  They’re putting them into ours, deciding what they want to do with our money and then expecting us to be grateful.

Oh well.  Rant over.  Do I feel better for it?  ‘Course not: I still have to fill in all those bloody forms!