The Stage

ACE proposes grants for commercial theatre

Published Wednesday 20 January 2010 at 11:15 by Alistair Smith

Arts Council England has unveiled proposals for a new “politician-proof” ten-year plan that would see a radical shake-up of its funding system, including allowing grant applications from the commercial theatre sector for the first time in decades.

The organisation has this week published Achieving Great Art for Everyone, a consultation paper putting forward its priorities for the next ten years. The arts sector is being asked to voice its own views on the plans, which will be taken into account by ACE, before a final strategy framework is published later in 2010, after the general election.

ACE chief executive Alan Davey said that the document was being created in part in response to criticisms of the arts council’s handling of its last investment strategy and hoped it would help avoid the clashes which had occurred between the sector and ACE on that occasion.

He explained: “What we’ve put up is something to be shot down or talked about, if you like. We want lots of discussion about it. That takes place over three months, we absorb it and, when there’s a new government, we’ll come back with what people have said and we’ll say what we think, our judgment.

“We’ll then convert that into a framework for the next investment strategy and beyond.

“If you look at companies in the commercial world who have done well, they’ve thought about ten years ahead and they’ve stuck to it through thick and thin - through short-term market fluctuations. We in the arts need to think a bit like that. I think we’re capable of doing it, because artists do tend to think long term and I think we [the arts council] need to acknowledge that.”

Davey added that the ten-year plan was intended to be “politician-proof, so that it doesn’t really matter what the political climate is, we’re clear what we want to do in the arts”.

One of the more radical suggestions in the consultation is a thorough shake-up of ACE’s current funding system, which would see Grants for the Arts retained in its current form, but all other methods of funding re-considered and made more flexible.

This could mean new one-year, two-year or even five-year funding deals, while ACE is also investigating the possibility of offering loans or guarantees against loss, in place of traditional subsidy.

“I think we have to look at new business models like that going forward,” said Davey, “whether we return to what the arts council used to do in the past, which is written guarantees and that sort of thing - I think it should all be in the mix.”

Meanwhile, Davey said that if the new strategy involved offering funding agreements to commercial theatre producers, it would most likely be focused on the touring market.

Other key priorities laid out in the consultation paper include establishing arts education as a curriculum requirement in secondary school education, increasing the number of “diverse artists” working with established organisations, securing more high-quality arts coverage on broadcast media and in the national press, and increasing international exposure for work created in England.

“The thing I want to emphasise is it’s about pushing boundaries, about giving arts and artists and companies space to experiment and create and move the art forms forward,” added Davey.

“The worst thing we could do would be to allow the publicly funded arts to become stale and boring.”

The consultation is available at www.artscouncil.org.uk/consultation and runs until April 14.