The Stage

Severe arts funding cuts inevitable - ROH chief

Published Tuesday 16 June 2009 at 16:25 by Alistair Smith

Royal Opera House chief executive Tony Hall has warned that it is not the recession but the ensuing cuts to public funding that pose the greatest threat to the future of the arts in the UK.

Speaking at the National Campaign for the Arts’ Future Britain Conference, he said that so far the recession had been “benign” for the arts world, with box office performing well and ancillary sales not too badly affected.

However, he added: “I think the thing we should be most concerned about and most worried about actually hasn’t happened yet. People ask whether there will be a lag to the recession. I have no idea. But what I do know is that the battle we are going to have to have in terms of public spending in a year’s time is going to be bigger, probably, than we’ve ever had before.

“The question in my mind is how we can best put over the case together for the arts in that public spending round, which will undoubtedly be pretty tough.”

Meanwhile, Munira Mirza, director of arts for the Mayor of London, echoed Hall’s warning and said that the sector had to consider where it wanted any potential cuts to fall, if public funding is lowered.

She explained: “It’s very clear in the current climate that there will be spending cuts. Whichever government comes in, they will be forced to make very difficult decisions. With the arts sector, if you had to lose some things, what things would you lose? I don’t mean by that arts centres, or particular arts projects. I mean by that the bureaucracy that is supposed to serve [the arts sector].

“As a policy maker - somebody who is constantly preoccupied with setting up new policy initiatives, structures or support systems - I am confident that a number of them are probably outdated and probably not serving a useful function to the sector. It’s only right - at any time, whether there’s a recession or not - that we should review the kinds of things we fund in order to support the sector. What would be very useful is to have a sense from people who work in the arts whether certain initiatives that they are supposed to participate in are actually useful and doing what they are supposed to do.”