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Dateline: 17th January, 2008
Hytner Condemns and Hewitt Defends National Theatre director Nicholas Hytner has condemned what he called Arts Council England's "strategic catastrophe" and suggests that the organisation should "get good at strategy. It’s the one thing they are not doing well." Speaking at the launch of the National's new season, he said those in power "don’t just invent the bollocks, they live the bollocks" and, wlthough they talk about strategy, "that’s the one thing they’re definitely not getting right." He had, he said, spoken to ACE about Bush, the Northcott and the National Student Drama Festival and was not happy with the answers he had received because the reasons they gave him for these particular cuts were not the ones that are in the public domain. He described this as "disturbing". He added that the cuts as a whole seem "ill thought-through and certainly very unfair." Today Peter Hewitt, chief executive of ACE, defended what they are doing and claimed they have received many messages of support for the strategy and the individual decisions. "It is pleasing," he said, "that the director of the National Theatre and others so strongly support the arts council’s arts funding strategy - in Hytner’s words, being encouraged to act boldly, otherwise new companies and new ideas would not emerge." However, he went on, it is disappointing that they are "less able to countenance the practical consequences of that strategy." The effect of the new funding round, he says, will be to create a "vibrant artistic culture."
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