ACE report reveals public want access and innovation from arts

Published Tuesday 6 November 2007 at 16:45 by Lalayn Baluch

Arts Council England must strive to be more transparent and should look to invest in innovative projects which engage with all levels of society, new research has claimed.

The final report from ACE’s £500,000 Arts Debate initiative - the organisation’s first ‘public value inquiry’ - reveals that the public is largely supportive of government investment in the arts, but also claims that there are people from all walks of life who feel excluded from England’s cultural offering. The findings also recommend that the public be given more involvement in the decision-making process through which companies receive funds. According to the report, some artists and organisations complained the arts council is “opaque”, with certain respondents saying they felt that decisions are being made by a small, closed group of experts who “do not know enough about how ordinary people experience the arts today”.

Meanwhile, there was strong consensus that the arts should be made accessible to as many people as possible. The report revealed that “members of the public would like to see access and reach at the top of the list [of ACE’s priorities], reflecting a strong desire for public funding to benefit as many people as possible.”

The Arts Debate took into account the opinions of 200 members of the public, 80 artists and arts managers, 30 stakeholder organisations such as local authorities and charities, 50 members of ACE staff and more than 1,200 written contributions.

Commenting on the findings, Andrew Whyte, ACE executive director of advocacy and communications, said: “There’s the whole question of how the arts responds to the challenge of engagement, which I think is quite significant. People want a bold and visionary arts council, a voice for the arts in society to set out new agendas. If you put those things together, then there is obviously a challenge to us in the arts council, to the arts sector, to really make the case to people.”

The results also revealed that forward-thinking and risk-taking work should be supported, with the report concluding that “a failure of innovation in the arts is also a failure of public value”.

Whyte added that this finding quashed concerns that consulting the public would result in “a common denominator answer”. He added: “Some people feared that you would end up with people wanting more musicals or something, and it absolutely doesn’t say that. The centrality of quality and innovation confound some potential critics’ expectations of the public’s attitude to the arts.”

ACE will respond in full to the report next spring, and the findings will form the basis of the arts council’s corporate plan for the next three years.