Charlotte Higgins rightly identifies how arts institutions have “learned helplessness” in responses to Arts Council England’s wholehearted endorsement of neoliberal policies (Britain’s art institutions face death by a thousand cuts. Why are they just putting up with it?, 22 March). The risk-averse charity governance model adopted by most arts bodies, combined with the ambitious (ie overoptimistic) income targets needed to finance the “right kind” of arts leaders and associated tiers of operations staff, are among the structural flaws laid bare by the pandemic that remain unresolved by policy implementation.
Less documented in the national press is the dire artistic and economic climate for visual artists, whom policy has made helpless. The poorly conceived eligibility criteria applied to government and ACE emergency funding to freelancers during Covid meant that the vast majority of artists simply fell through the cracks.
More worrying still is the unacknowledged stark decline since 2008 in ACE’s support for individual artists. A comparison of grants data in 2008 with 2019 reveals a staggering loss of at least £5.2m per year in relative value in the budgets for direct grants to artists. ACE does acknowledge the difficulties for individuals making one-off applications via its Grantium portal.
But there’s no signal that its plans will stretch to increasing the pot of no-strings funding that’s proved essential to sustaining artists. Surely, after a gruelling pandemic, visual artists deserve the chance to dream, much as arts organisations do?
Susan Jones
Rowlands Gill, Tyne and Wear
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