The Stage

Lib Dems promise to maintain arts funding if elected

Published Tuesday 9 February 2010 at 16:20 by Natalie Woolman

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has pledged that his party will not cut arts funding if it is elected this year.

In their new report, The Power of Creativity, the Liberal Democrats state that they will keep current levels of subsidy for the arts - the first of the major parties to make such a promise.

The document says that the party would strengthen the role of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in championing the arts across national and local government and establish a cabinet committee on creativity. It also remains committed to arms-length funding for the arts, according to the report.

Launching the paper, party leader Clegg said: “The idea that you can cut a £180 billion deficit by slicing money out of the budget of the DCMS is frankly absurd. We are taking a strong line that no department should be ‘ring-fenced’ as if every single thing they do is sacrosanct. But I can promise you that there will be no big cuts to arts spending in our manifesto. Arts funding is a duty, not an option for any government.”

Meanwhile, the document itself was even stronger in its commitment, saying that “the Liberal Democrats will maintain current levels of investment in the arts and creative industries”.

Earlier this week, the Liberal Democrats also criticised the government’s A Night Less Ordinary theatre ticket scheme, which was created to hand out 600,000 free tickets to young people under 26 over two years.

Research has revealed that only 177,345 tickets were made available during the first ten months of the scheme and just two thirds of the tickets offered have been taken up.

When plans for the scheme were originally announced, DCMS planned to release one million free tickets, but this was later reduced to 600,000. In a statement, the Liberal Democrats commented that “at the current rate, the government will be way off this target as well”.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Don Foster said: “These figures are a disgrace and the government ought to be ashamed. It is no wonder they were buried in a little visited area of the arts council’s website.

“The resources and forward planning needed to make a scheme like this work were never there.

“This money could have been much better used supporting youth theatre groups or providing drama in schools.”

A spokesman for Arts Council England said that it expected the uptake of tickets to increase over the course of the scheme and that ACE’s projections are for 40% of tickets to be given away in the first year and 60% in the second. The spokesman said the arts council was confident it is on course to achieve the two-year target.

ACE chief executive Alan Davey said: “Results for the first year of A Night Less Ordinary will be available in April, but at the end of its third quarter, we had given away 70% of the target number of tickets for that period. That’s good news and it will get better. But this is about more than the numbers. We want to learn the best way to reach new young audiences and to encourage a long-term theatre-going habit. The scheme is being independently evaluated and the results will be published next summer.”