|
ITC meeting with Arts Council of Wales
|
Re: Drama Strategy
For ACW: Sybil Crouch (Chair); Jo Weston (Chief Executive); Michael Baker (Director of Drama)
For ITC: Nicola Thorold (Director); Jessica Cohen (Earthfall Dance/ITC representative for Wales); Val Hill (Hijinx/WAPA)
ITC started by stating that we cannot support the new drama strategy for the following reasons:
1. Financial implications - Can they afford 2 national companies?
- Not enough funds in the project fund and no ladder of opportunity
2. Flawed process
3. Breakdown in confidence between ACW and Welsh artists and practitioners
4. Disagree that strategy will lead to improved quality and diversity of Welsh Arts
5. Concern that a bad starting point for advocating more funds to arts in Wales with New Assembly.
ITC urged ACW to delay implementing strategy until Assembly's review is completed (June '00). ACW stressed that this cannot happen as certain elements (namely Clywd's funding levels and intimations of funding levels to Volcano and CPR) are already in place.
Also the drama strategy has been agreed with the National Assembly when the latter agreed the corporate plan.
ACW committed to reviewing and evaluating the strategy as an ongoing process.
Financial Implications
a) ACW stated that their Corporate Plan contains the most detailed financial statement of any Arts Council's
b) Guide to grants will be published in next two weeks but budgets for project funds not available until after December Council meeting. Said confident that greater project funds than last year but not as much as had originally hoped.
c) Clarified that rules for applying for Lottery funding have not changed in terms of eligibility
d) Denied that ACW will ask revenue clients to 'do' more for increased grants. Wants clients to lead the Funding Agreement process. Would like to extend the three-year agreement to as many clients as possible.
e) ITC suggested that they extend the three-year principle to project funding too.
TIE/TYP Franchise Process
a) Agreed that relations with some Local Authorities 'a difficulty'
b) Confirmed that they had consulted all Local Authorities but not necessarily the departments that have since claimed they were not consulted.
c) TIE/TYP franchises were evaluated against the published criteria although local considerations were not a major priority (despite having been published as such)
d) Could not make individual applications public as would be a breach of client confidentiality - might consider warning future applicants for franchises/etc that their application could be made public.
e) Will give feed-back to unsuccessful applicants
f) Is concerned by perception and misconceptions of the process and will be putting together a synopsis to explain the whole picture.
New Writing Strategy
a) ACE insisted that writers asked for a New Writing Centre to be developed and that their specialist advisers suggested that combining Welsh and English new writing would be beneficial (ITC disagreed)
b) Feel that more 'needs to be said' about their support for new writing, particularly in relation to non-specialist core clients. Disagreed with ITC that new writing can be expensive for building based organisations.
c) ACW will compare year on year the number of new commissions being offered to Welsh writers.
d) ACW 'hypothetically' open to a new proposal on new writing if the invited bids do not meet ACW's needs. In which case they would open the process up wider.
Other Art Form related issues
a) Want to encourage more collaborations between companies and venues.
b) More work needs to be done on the project fund and noted ITC's concerns about the lack of a funding ladder of development opportunities for companies.
c) Will be reviewing community provision. No timetable yet.
d) Timescale on Welsh speaking national company - aiming for personnel to be in place January 2001 but brainstorming starting now.
Relationship with National Assembly
a) Early days and still working out respective roles
b) Accountable in 3 main ways
1. Code of Conduct
2. Financial and accountability systems
3. Corporate Plan
c) Corporate Plan being reworked and will be approved by officials within days of being submitted.
Relationship with arts constituency
ACW very concerned to rebuild relationships with constituency and realise that they need to communicate more.
Were interested to know why there had been such a breakdown in the relationship. ITC said that artists & companies felt that the strategy ignored the needs and strengths of artists and that it threatened many jobs. ACW believe that not many jobs will go.
|
ITC
web site: |
e-mail: |
Wednesday, December 15, 1999 |
|
|
|
|
Older news
stories have been carefully archived.
2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999
