Theatre in Wales

Theatre, dance and performance reviews

Dramatist: “Collapse in the Principle that Arts Councils were Founded On”

Tim Price

In His Own Words , Theatre of Wales in 2024 , October 26, 2024
Tim Price by In His Own Words Tim Price wrote for a new substack publication “Cwlwm” on 18th May. “Nye” had transferred, to huge success, from the National Theatre in London to the Wales Millennium Centre.

He headed it “Aneurin Bevan, Jennie Lee – and why we need a new settlement for the arts.”

There is a broader point behind his article. There is a consequence when organisations elevate secondary purposes over the primary purpose, the cause for they were established in the first place.

They will fail to fulfill either primary or any other purposes.**

Tim Price:

“On 23 April 2024, the play I wrote – Nye, about the life and times of Aneurin Bevan –was broadcast by NTLIVE to over 600 cinemas, and was seen by more than 50,000 people, from Truro to Inverness. It was the one hundredth live broadcast by NTLIVE, whose mission is to take world class theatre to audiences and communities unable to get to London to see the show, at the price of a local cinema ticket.

“It was an incredible experience to sit in the audience thinking that so many people were engaging with this story. My parents watched in the Vue in Merthyr, my brother in the Everyman in Esher (go social mobility!), and I had friends in Bangor, Liverpool and Newcastle all tuning in. We were telling a Welsh working-class story with a largely Welsh cast on the biggest stage in the UK.

“Previously the only other Welsh plays on this stage had been The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams and Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, twice, the second time with adaptation by Sian Owen.*

“It felt like an arrival or sorts for all of us. Our stories were legitimate. Our talent was legitimate. There were actors in the cast that I have worked with for over twenty years, making shows on shoestrings, under rehearsed, under paid and under programmed. Finally we were at the National Theatre, on its biggest stage.

“Why has it been so long and so hard to get Welsh stories here? Can it happen again? It got me thinking about the state of theatre in both Wales and the UK. Do we have the infrastructure to support the next generation of talent?

“In the past ten years both arts councils in England and Wales have shifted their priorities away from excellence to creativity. Nowhere in either arts council’s strategic plans are there any references to making ‘excellent’ work.

“This has long been the stated goal of Arts Councils since Jennie Lee’s (Aneurin Bevan’s wife) founding document, A Policy for the Arts, where she says

“If a high level of artistic achievement is to be sustained and the best in the arts made more widely available, more generous and discriminating help is needed, locally, regionally and nationally.’

“But current policy thinking goes against this goal – that participation is what audiences need rather than access to excellence. As a result, the number of professional opportunities within the arts in Wales has shrunk; whether it’s professional theatre, music or opera, all disciplines have seen a marked reduction in paid work whilst creative engagement work in these fields has grown. The blurring between shows with amateur participation and professionally trained artists is becoming a significant feature.

“This is because arts councils quite rightly want to rectify the imbalance in their arts spending, getting it away from ABC1 audiences who make up the majority of those that attend theatre and concerts and towards marginalised groups and communities – in keeping with Lee’s vision. But they are departing from Lee’s vision by promoting participation over artistic excellence.

“This shift may be down to a collapse in the arm’s length principle the arts councils were founded on. Arts councils were supposed to create a buffer between politicians and artists so that artists were free from political censorship. But following catastrophic cuts, to the extent that it is questionable if they remain fit for purpose, arts councils have become increasingly keen to prove their worth to their paymasters, and so priorities have increasingly become aligned with those of governments.

“Whilst arts councils continue to be arm’s length from artists, they have increasingly become arm-in-arm with governments leading to the instrumentalisation of the arts. Arts councils are increasingly taking responsibility to address problems the governments in London and Cardiff have created. Be it crises in health, housing, social justice or climate justice, arts councils have taken up the mantle.

“....theatre companies have to explain in detail how reviving a Samuel Beckett play will contribute to the improvement of audiences’ mental health and well-being or they don’t get paid. It is laughable. Arts Councils have allowed artists to become elaborate labels on the empty luggage of Government.

“The Cabinet Secretaries for Culture and Social Justice alongside Arts Council Wales has consistently failed to make the case for the arts in Wales. Compared to England, Scotland and Northern Ireland and Ireland, Wales spends the least amount of money per head on culture. We spend just a little bit more than the English West Midlands.

“We have had a decade of standstill funding in the arts, which in real terms is a cut of nearly 40% for some organisations. On top of this decade of standstill funding, Arts Council Wales had an additional 10% cut from Welsh Government this year. Our arts leaders are consistently not winning the argument for artists. In a time of soaring costs because of inflation, Brexit and the war in Ukraine, the cost of heating building and raw materials has doubled in the past two years.

“But is it even possible to make a case for the arts when the minister in charge has brief that covers: the arts, elite sports, heritage, broadcasting, the voluntary sector, welfare reform, asylum seekers, police and crime commissioners, human rights, community safety, prisons and the future generations framework. Is there hope for a nuanced understanding of anything with a brief like that? I suspect not.

“Which may have led to ACW’s determination to serve the Welsh Government data that might just catch someone’s eye. This has led to ACW making the Welsh language a priority, in a bilingual nation. If you want your organisation to secure funding in Wales you are required to make part of your activity in the Welsh language, no matter where you are located, what your activity is or who your audience is.

“This resulted in the farcical situation where the English language National Theatre Wales made Welsh language work at the 2023 Eisteddfod despite the fact we already have a dedicated Welsh language national theatre, Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. A tick-box approach to funding decisions leads to a tick-box approach to programming and noone, anywhere, is asking if any of this makes sense, or makes good work, or is what audiences want.

“With just six priorities (Creativity, widening engagement, the Welsh language, Climate justice, nurturing talent and transformation) that all have to be met for continued portfolio funding, we have organisations like the Wales Millennium Centre with a £3.5m grant operating with the same priorities as a small theatre company like Theatrau Sir Gar with a mere £50,000 grant.

“Every organisation in Wales, no matter what their specialism, is trying to decant the work into one of the six ACW priorities. A more sensible approach would be for ACW to have 15 priorities and allow organisations to pick and choose which 5 or 6 they will deliver on, allowing organisations to differentiate and respond to the needs of their own different audiences, their locations and the talent they engage with.

“Which brings me back to my question: when will we next see a Welsh play with the best actors from Wales on a major stage, broadcast to every community in the country?

“I would hope that day will come soon, but in truth I imagine it is unlikely because I don’t believe the current Welsh Government values the arts or even understands the arts, and I don’t believe Arts Council Wales has the leverage to protect the next generation from more cuts. Couple this with an ideology that has taken hold of arts administration that professionalism is a barrier to inclusion and it looks like a sub-optimal time to be an artist in Wales.

“I hope that within a couple of years I will be able to sit down in my local cinema and enjoy the works of the best of Wales broadcast from one of the country’s best resourced stages. We certainly have the talent. Can we organise ourselves in such a way that talent achieves its potential? Can coming from Wales be a help rather than a hindrance for artists?

“Because if we cannot sustain a professional artistic community in Wales, then there is no art to be shared. And if there is no new art to be shared then there will be no new opportunities to remind us that we all have more in common than that which divides us.

“As Jennie Lee said: ‘The exclusion of so many for so long from… our cultural heritage can become as damaging to the privileged minority as to the under-privileged majority.’

"It is time for a new settlement for the arts in Wales, before it is too late." 

Extract, with thanks and acknowledgement, from the full article which can be read at:

https://cwlwm.substack.com/p/aneurin-bevan-jennie-lee-and-why?

Notes:

*These productions were staged in London to acclaim after the pandemic by the National Theatre.

It is a matter of record that the National Theatre of Wales abandoned productions from the theatrical past after 2016.

**The beneficiary doctrine has been written about on this site. That doctrine, plus the axioms of Quality Management, play no part in the management of culture in Cardiff Bay.

A guide to the productions of Tim Price can be seen in the first link below.

Picture: Tim Price during rehearsal at the Sherman.

Reviewed by: Adam Somerset

back to the list of reviews

This review has been read 104 times

There are 18 other reviews of productions with this title in our database:

 

Privacy Policy | Contact Us | © keith morris / red snapper web designs / keith@artx.co.uk