In the turmoil of the new government’s stock-taking efforts, one edict has passed with little comment: a day before it was due to announce its new three-year funding commitment to arts organisations around the country, Arts Council England (ACE) was instructed by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to hold fire. This might seem small beer in the context of all the departmental cuts coming down the line, but it has left the 828 national portfolio organisations – which ACE regards and supports as the nation’s crown jewels – in a terrifying 10-day limbo.
They include theatre, dance and opera companies, orchestras, art galleries and museums. For many, the fear is existential: it is not simply a question of whether their incomes will be reduced when the current term ends in April next year – most have anyway been bracing themselves for that – but whether they will survive at all.
The threat to London companies is particularly extreme. The previous culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, had already instructed that £24m a year was to be taken out of ACE’s budget in the capital by 2025-26, for redistribution to other parts of England. Some have been scrambling to relocate, but even that may not save them. They are only part of the remit of Mrs Dorries’s successor, Michelle Donelan, who must play tough at the negotiating table in the run-up to the delayed 17 November budget.
For obvious reasons, the DCMS is not regarded as one of the top priority departments: it does not solve the heat or eat crisis, address the balance of payments gap, or reduce hospital waiting lists. However, a world in which the lights were allowed to go out on culture would not only be a sadder, but also a genuinely poorer place. The creative industries both enrich lives and – crucially, at a time of financial crisis – bring money into the economy. They are one of the few sectors of post-Brexit Britain with an untarnished reputation as a global player, and they export that reputation through touring and international partnerships, building the understanding and respect that amount to soft power. They are also, according to the DCMS’s own figures, one of the country’s biggest employers, providing nearly 7% of all UK jobs.
For all the then government’s many blunders in its handling of the pandemic, Rishi Sunak’s exchequer acknowledged this value, in partnership with Oliver Dowden at the DCMS, by setting up the culture recovery fund. This not only kept the home fires burning, but also won applause from a section of the population not generally given to blowing the Tory trumpet. They went on to help meet the challenge of bringing audiences back to live arts by temporarily hiking the tax credits that could be claimed. That figure is due to start tapering down from April – exactly the moment when the funding bomb is due to land.
The current ACE grant-in-aid budget of £341m a year is peanuts in terms of public finances. This is not a moment to admit defeat. It is a time for strong arguments and imaginative thinking about what can practically be done to keep the heart of culture beating. These need to range beyond pinched ACE finances to extended tax breaks, a rethink on business rates and a reconsideration of the relationship between culture and tourism. The welfare of the nation depends on it.
