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Arts Council Uncovered |
| Arts Councils , Wales, Scotland & England , February 6, 2026 |
Articles on the Arts Councils below:9 February 2026: “No Discussion of Artistic Excellence, Let Alone Art” Hodge Report on Arts Council England Recommends Reform * * * * 28 November 2024: “There Will Be No Professional Sector in 10 Years” “Some small nations of Europe view culture as a means to influence. The Republic of Ireland was explicit on its intent and strategy. The Government of Wales has ratcheted down cultural expenditure to be Europe's lowest. “The official record for the Senedd of 13th November 2024 includes an exchange between back-bencher and Minister. Heledd Fychan said: “This is 14 years of underinvestment in culture and sport—no strategy from Welsh Government” “Jack Sargeant, Culture Secretary: “We've had 14 years of policies from a Westminster Government. That impact of austerity is very real, and the situation that is in front of the arts, culture and sports sector faces up to the reality of those policies. And that was a choice by the Conservative Government.” * * * * 21 November 2024: Review of Theatre Forthcoming “To do this, the review will consider: “What are the gaps in English language theatre provision; what are audiences missing and why? What do audiences want? “How can we deliver ambitious work at scale that harnesses the nations creative skills and talents? “What might be the possible models for doing this?" * * * * 31 October 2024: “Collapse in the Principle that Arts Councils were Founded On” “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.” * * * * 24 August 2023: “The Arts Council Should Focus its Energies on the Arts.” “The business models of civic theatre and new writing theatre are incompatible. “...looking to the best practice that existed in the last century. They should read what Jennie Lee said and what she stood for. “...some remarkable words on how the Arts Council of Wales sets about its work. Dense thickets of irrelevance obscure attention to the arts.” * * * * 12 July 2020: Writers Call on Arts Council in England to Clear Out its Language "The critics represent the Council as abandoning its mission, positioning itself as a development agency, intent on “building the identity and prosperity of places”... a system totally ensnared in a byzantine maze of targets, metrics, monitoring and evaluations, trust has been lost." * * * * 26 June 2020: The Arts Council Summoned to the House of Commons Carl Tighe history “In the Palace of Westminster: “After a shaky start before the Committee, WAC just about managed to pull together a creditable performance. By the end of the show WAC had begun to shape up as a troupe of honest, well-meaning chaps, much maligned in the press and misunderstood by clients. However, a number of serious questions remain: Just who is the WAC accountable to? How does WAC decide and administer its artistic criteria?” * * * * 30 March 2020: “Cut Out the Pompous Language” was about the language that was used by makers of theatre, at a remove from their beneficiaries, audiences. “The jargonisation of language has a social purpose. It creates an in-group. But more important it creates out-groups. Look at those who, in normal times, go out for an evening. They go for laughter or tears, for excitement or profundity. Then look at every utterance from every organisation with a responsibility for arts funding. The base functions of the arts- the making of meaning and the eliciting of emotion- are forbidden to be spoken about.” * * * * 25 March 2020: “Public Art in the Public Sector Needs a Public” “ACW Quality Standard: “A confident and effective arts organisation will embrace the honest and rigorous self assessment of its work. It will actively elicit feedback and critical review, and use this intelligence to shape and inform future activity.” * * * * 01 July 2019: The Benefits of Less Strategy “The funding system has never been clear about what it seeks to achieve from the process of funding drama.” * * * * 12 April 2019: David Adams in 2000 “What do we have today in Wales? A Mess.” “The problem is the general cultural one of Wales being more or less invisible or remains only dimly perceived, if not invisible...Any theatre practice, especially non-literary performance, and especially that of a subdominant culture such as Wales's in relation to England, does becomes invisible if it is not recorded.” * * * * 20 November 2018: Darren Henley of Arts Council of Wales “But there's no subsidy. Personally, I cannot abide the term. The Arts Council doesn't use public money to subsidise art and culture- it invests money for the benefit of all the public.” Henley cites Peter Bazalgette’s first speech as Arts Council Chair. “The arts create shared experiences that move us to laughter or to tears.” “Wales is unique in that the managers have to put up with the slippery instrument of the Ministerial “Letter of Remit.” * * * * 09 August 2018: Scotland: Arts Council Loses Chief Executive “Criticism of our artistic judgement. I won't tolerate that.” He declaimed that arts funding is in the hands of philistines and a cultural disgrace. True to this tradition the arts in Scotland have had an explosive first half of 2018." * * * * 20 February 2014: A client company reports on its relationship with its funder. “The Arts Council of England is revealed. If this is its normal mode, and standard, of behaviour, it is unsettling...cannot analyse a client company's cost structure.” * * * * 03 January 2013: Scotland "The critique was stinging: “the organisation finds itself in the hands of a leadership which refers to the allocation of funds as the “boring bit” of its job.” The managers, ran the claim of Scotland’s artists, wanted to do “advocacy, social strategy and business development… demonstrably none of its business.” * * * * 19 December 2012: ACW 2000 Timeline of troubles “The Arts Council is rapidly losing its political friends and is moving closer to abolition...the possibility of the total closure of the council was put forward by party deputy president Rob Humphreys, and it won the support of Jenny Randerson, AM for Cardiff Central." * * * * 12 December 2012: ACW 1999 Timeline This article reprised the events of the year that rocked the Arts Council of Wales and ricochetted across councils and to the House of Commons. It was caused by the intent for a strategy for drama. The language was ripe- “disgust”, “slippery”, disingenuous”, “appalling ignorance”, “another example of the Welsh capacity to shoot ourselves in both feet and the brain at the same time”,“swingeing demolition exercise.” |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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