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ACE: The Disaster Movie!Dateline: 24th January, 1999 Anyone could have foreseen that one of the subjects I will be writing about with almost monotonous regularity throughout the coming year will be the Arts Council of England, but even I could not have predicted that it would be the subject of my fourth feature of the year and that it would deal with two more own-goals for this terminally ill quango. Let us turn our attention away from theatre for a moment to our sister art, Music. Early last week every orchestra in Britain - every single one, no exceptions - signed a joint letter to Culture Secretary Chris Smith telling him of their total lack of confidence in the Arts Council's ability to manage orchestral music in the UK. They asked for an urgent meeting to discuss funding and, in particular, devolution to the Regional Arts Boards, the handling of which they believe has been a total disaster. Then there's the business of restructuring of ACE itself. It announced seven months ago that there would be a huge number of job losses. Last week redundancy notices were handed to 150 staff. To have every single member of staff worrying for seven months whether they were to lose their jobs is, to say the least, insensitive. Most would call it cruel. But this week did not bring an end to the situation. The redundancies are not confirmed, and will not be until mid-April - a further three months! And an ACE spokesman had the gall to refuse to comment "out of consideration for individual members of staff"! Words fail me! One does wonder what the effect of 150 redundancies upon funding is going to be. After all, they can't just say, "You're sacked! Goodbye." Redundancy payments have to be made to all staff who have been with ACE for more than two years. That won't come cheaply. Let's assume that the average salary of those being sacked is £225 a week and that they've been with ACE for an average of ten years. With an average redundancy payment of £2,250, that's a total of £337,500 to be found, which would make a pretty good dent in the RSC's deficit! But that's not all: one of the few remaining officers who have the confidence of the arts world, music director Kathryn McDowell has resigned to take up the post of chief executive of the Wales Millenium Centre. Previously on the ACE Disaster Show.... Last month Graham Marchant, director of arts and policy, resigned after just six months in the post. Deputy chief executive Graham Devlin leaves in March. At the end of November, the Ombudsman upheld a complaint against ACE for its handling of Lottery funding and, as a result, the organisation was forced to withdraw its code of practice as it did not conform to government guidelines. Early in November, ACE was accused of "cronyism" after it awarded an extra Lottery grant of £2.5m to the Royal Court. Back in May last year the entire Drama Panel resigned and new members were not appointed until the week before last. They will only remain in post until March. In recent months there have been increasing complaints about chief executive Peter Hewitt's leadership. He has been attacked by the Birmingham Royal Ballet over funding and by the Independent Theatre Council over its attitude towards smaller companies. Meanwhile the Resistance grows.... According to The Stage, communications director Phil Murphy, who was appointed by Hewitt, has proved so unpopular in the industry that a secret resistance group has been set up: AMMO - Arts Managers want Murphy Out! More and more people are daring to think the unthinkable, that the Arts Council should go. In its leader last week, The Stage takes a slightly ambivalent stance on the matter, but it does make one very good point, when it says, Governments of whatever political hue are fickle friends and most prefer their Arts Councils either non-existent or emasculated and "on-message". The leader-writer is quite correct, of course. But my feeling is that when the arts world has a friend like ACE, it has absolutely no need of enemies. ACE just simply has to go. It has lost all credibility in the eyes of the public and it has lost the confidence of the arts world. It has also quite clearly lost the confidence of the government too, otherwise why is there any necessity for QUEST? It's no good talking about restructuring or radical reform: that's what Gerry Robinson and Peter Hewitt were brought in to do, and what an appalling hash they've made of it. Son of ACE? Why do we need an arts council anyway? Because, quite simply, until there is enough money to fund each and every arts activity that needs funding, then someone somewhere has to make decisions. There has to be strategic planning to make the best use of whatever money is available. So yes, we do need an arts council. We've tried radical reform of the one we've got, and, as the catalogue of errors listed above shows, it hasn't worked. It may be argued that we haven't given Robinson and Hewitt long enough, but, in the face of the disasters that have happened in the last six to eight months, can we afford to wait any longer for them to get it right? With their current track-recod, all we'll see is more confusion, more disaster, and a situation that will be all the more difficult to rectify. No. It's time to close down the Arts Council of England and replace it with a much more limited body, charged with the oversight of major national companies. For the rest, money and strategic planning should be the job of the Regional Arts Boards. The history of the last government shows the dire effects of centralisation and managementism in local government, education, the health service - and the arts. Central control should be cut to an absolute minimum. Let's give each RAB a share of the global money available for the arts on the basis of their population. Let them, with their knowledge of and passion for the local community, make the strategic and tactical decisions necssary - and let's set a limit on their size, so we don't have grossly bloated organisations like ACE has become. And let's do it now. Articles Indices: |
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