The Stage

Features

Letters

Unfair game

Published Monday 23 April 2007 at 12:30

Tessa Jowell has announced that further to the £410 million already given to the Olympics from cultural activities, £100m more will be siphoned off from the arts.

Apparently, she has plans to repay these funds in the 2013 arts budget. But why does the arts council state that in the meantime “we don’t want to hit smaller organisations over the larger ones, but because of the way our funding is structured, these cuts will directly hit smaller projects, individual artists and touring groups”? Surely the arts council should consider closing down the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet companies, English National Opera, the Royal Shakespeare and National Theatre companies. In 2013 the government in power could then decide whether the Olympics have been sufficiently worthwhile to reinstate these companies.

The logical way of funding future Olympics is obviously to institute an annual levy on all participating countries so that a substantial fund is readily available to any country chosen to host future Games. It is, of course, too late for such a scheme to salvage the damage being done to the British arts, cultural and entertainment world, but it would at least avoid any such heathen method being used by any other country having to pay for the Olympics.

Anthony Field

Cromwell Tower

London EC2Y

Loading

Also in Features

Council bungles over theatre land sale
Thanks very much to Ted Bottle for his support of our struggle against…
Extras rejection snobbery
All change for ‘Tipperary’ station
It’s all change at a station which sent troops to war with a song in their…
Even the professionals get names wrong…
Your Chit Chat column (page 9, May 10) got a lot of mocking mileage out of…
Hat Trick response
An error of judgement was made by a junior freelancer new to Hat Trick in…
No sympathy for YouTube
I don’t deny I’m having to be dragged hollering and screaming into the…
Propeller kept me spinning
I was pleased to read that the Propeller Theatre Company has ended its…
Happy and Eager to comment
Your news piece Trio Run for Equity President (May 3), in its online…
What about family tickets?
Even though I am fully aware that I can book online through various different…
Pricing: the way forward
I realise that it’s incredibly costly to mount a West End show, especially a…

Content is copyright © 2012 The Stage Media Company Limited unless otherwise stated.

All RSS feeds are published for personal, non-commercial use. (What’s RSS?)