The Stage

Davey hits back at calls to scrap ACE

Published Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 13:55 by Alistair Smith

Arts Council England has hit back at a new report that calls on the funding body to be scrapped, branding the research “misleading” and “naive”.

The Arts Council: Managed to Death was published this week by the right-wing think-tank for the arts, the New Culture Forum. Written by NCF researcher Marc Sidwell, the report claims administrative costs at the arts council have risen from 3.8% to 14% and it lacks its expertise. It also insists the sector has lost confidence in ACE and many leaders of major cultural institutions want it to be abolished.

“The arts council is in need not of minor reform but of radical surgery or wholesale replacement. It is an organisation that has gone through two large re-organisations, only to emerge in bad shape, dominated by managerial thinking, inefficient in its use of its substantial budgets, driven by politicised attitudes and over-committed to central direction of the development of English art,” the report concludes.

It calls on ACE to be disbanded and replaced with regional councils, while its national strategic oversight would pass to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which would also fund major arts organisations directly. Arts and Business and the Craft Council would also be funded directly by DCMS. But the research has been heavily criticised by ACE, which claims it contains inaccurate data relating to its administrative costs and staffing levels. ACE also insists the report’s proposals represent a “naive recipe for bureaucracy” which would create “at least 18 new quangos”, “a move from the British to the French system of direct political control of independent bodies” and “the removal of around £40 million of education money from the arts”.

ACE chief executive Alan Davey said: “This report is hampered and its analysis called into question by some highly misleading factual inaccuracies.

Most worryingly of all, it seems to hint that cuts to arts funding would be a good thing. It is a pity that, in publishing their report, the New Culture Forum missed the opportunity for a proper analysis of arts funding and of the challenges that lie ahead.”

Shadow culture minister Ed Vaizey attended the launch of the document this week but insisted that the Tories would not abolish the arts council if they came to power after the general election.

He told The Stage: “I thought the report was a useful contribution to the debate but we’re not in a position where we want to abolish the arts council, we want to strengthen it. We don’t want to impose initiatives on the arts council, but would rather have the arts council come to us with their own initiatives. And we would like to encourage the arts council to become a centre of expertise - not just for the subsidised sector but also for the commercial sector, such as West End theatres.”

www.newcultureforum.org.uk