The Stage

ACE supports ‘daft’ projects, says public

Published Thursday 22 February 2007 at 11:20 by Nuala Calvi

Arts Council England supports elitist, politically correct and “simply daft” projects, according to members of the public who have taken part in the organisation’s £500,000 Arts Debate.

Many people have little idea what the funding body actually does and think the public should have a say in deciding what kinds of projects receive taxpayer’s money, the research reveals.

The public value inquiry suggests there is broad agreement that the arts benefit society and should be subsidised, with people feeling the current level of expenditure is “very reasonable”.

However, the criticisms come at an awkward time for ACE, as it makes its funding case to government, ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review announcement. Responding to the research, industry leaders said the success in the West End and at this week’s Olivier Awards of productions originating in the subsidised sector proved work reached beyond “elite” audiences.

Theatre Royal, Stratford East director Kerry Michael, whose venue hosted the Olivier Award-winning hip hop musical Pied Piper, said: “By investing in local talent with Pied Piper, we were able to create a piece which was a commercial and critical success, as well as breaking new ground, as proved by the award. For the last seven years, we’ve been using our subsidy to deliver our musical theatre initiative, working with rappers, MCs and musicians - all of whom have been cherry-picked by the film, TV and music industry.”

His comments echo those of British Oscar hopefuls such as Judi Dench, who have spoken about how a healthy theatre sector feeds into more populist art forms.

The ACE-commissioned research is the first phase of a two-part project and involved 20 discussion groups and ten interviews with a cross-section of people from around England.

Participants spoke of their perception that large, flagship companies receive the lion’s share of arts funding, yet produced work that was inaccessible to ordinary people. The Royal Opera House, one of ACE’s biggest clients, insisted that national arts organisations were making big strides towards becoming more accessible.

ROH chief executive Tony Hall said: “We’ve put an awful lot of effort into initiatives to lower prices - we have school matinees, big screen relays and a large education programme, all to encourage new people to come and see our work.

“Part of what we’re doing with public subsidy is nurturing artists, and that’s very, very important. Without that you wouldn’t have a creative economy that’s growing by 8% a year. We are the bedrock of that economy.”

ACE’s executive director for advocacy and communications Andrew Whyte said the research showed the organisation, and the sector as a whole, needed to shout louder about the efforts being made to widen access to the arts and demystify them.

He added: “When people discovered what the national companies actually did, they were very interested.

“Clearly, one of the messages we as the arts council, and the national companies themselves, need to take is that we do need to do more to tell the story about where we are in terms of widening access and how that’s central to what we do.”