The Stage

Welsh Assembly forced into direct funding u-turn

Published Tuesday 7 February 2006 at 13:15

Wales culture minister Alun Pugh’s plan to split the country’s six largest performing arts organisations from Arts Council Wales and fund them directly from central government has been overturned by a coalition of opposition parties in the Welsh Assembly.

Fears over the erosion of the arm’s length principle of arts funding led to the Assembly’s decision to overrule the minority Labour administration and demand a comprehensive inquiry, to be completed by December, into the question of how the arts in Wales are run.

All work on moving the six national companies - Welsh National Opera, BBC National Orchestra, Diversions, Academi, Mold-based Clwyd Theatr Cymru and the Welsh language Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru - under direct control of the Assembly will now halt.

However, Pugh repeated his view that arts funding and policy in Wales need to change, adding that only in that way would public spending on the arts affect all communities, particularly the poorer ones.

He also questioned the need for an unchanged arm’s-length principle - pointing out that Scotland is taking its big companies in-house, and direct funding is common among liberal democracies in Europe.

Conservative culture spokesman Lisa Francis questioned why the access issue necessitated a takeover of the six national companies, claiming it was already being dealt with by the arts council under non-reappointed chair Geraint Talfan Davies.

A statement issued by ACW said that it welcomed the decision to halt the transfer of the six companies and hoped the review into Welsh arts funding would be “open, thorough and transparent”.

It added: “We hope that both the process and its outcome will establish well-founded and lasting arrangements for the governance of the arts in Wales that reconcile the needs of democratic accountability and the value of the arm’s length principle in a way that will have the support of the arts sector and a wider public.”

The decision follows the campaign by the Welsh Assembly’s three minority parties - who possess a combined majority over Labour - to block the transfer of control of the six principal companies to the Assembly’s culture department. It also comes shortly after the Scottish Executive’s decision that the country’s five national performing arts organisations would be taken under direct control of the government.

Equity, which had been a vocal opponent to the Assembly’s initial decision to take control of the six organisations away from ACW, said it was “very pleased” by the policy reversal.

A spokesperson added: “We hope that the review that has been announced with mean that ACW will continue to fund all those six organisations and this will be an end to the notion that there should be direct political funding of any performing arts organisation.”