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Arts cuts: the beginning of the end for British theatre?
The Arts Council's 0.5% funding reduction wasn't the blow many were expecting – but there's more belt-tightening on the way
That empty feeling ... Further investment is vital to keep UK theatres up and running. Photograph: Corbis
Lyn Gardner
@lyngardner
Fri 18 Jun 2010 11.32 EDT
The week in which British theatre did brilliantly at the Tony awards in New York and Stephen Daldry and Danny Boyle, who both served their apprenticeship in subsidised theatre, were appointed to produce the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, was not the week for the Arts Council to announce sweeping cuts in order to make the £19m of in-year savings demanded of it by the DCMS.
In the event, the Arts Council has taken the equal-misery-for-all approach with a 0.5% funding cut across the board for regionally funded organisations. Of course it's not fair, but British theatre has never been a level playing field and smaller organisations will be more badly affected than big players such as the National and the RSC, for whom the loss of £99,000 and £80,000 respectively – while not insubstantial – won't cause too much damage. These are sums that big companies might be able to replace in other ways.
The real worry is that this is only the beginning, and that the arts will fare badly in the Comprehensive Spending Review in the autumn and will be badly affected by cuts to local authority spending, too. If the economy takes a further downward turn, ticket sales may suffer – as will many buildings providing conference space that have already seen income streams dry up. The Sustain fund has already helped out several who might not have survived otherwise, recession or no recession, and there won't be any more handouts like that.
No, I think we have to accept that while culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, a man who clearly knows the value of money (he once claimed 1p against his expenses for a 12-second phone call), and the Tories talked the arts talk before the election, and did their best to argue that the Tories were not the nasty-to-the-arts party, they don't really understand that they are not supporting the arts but investing in them. They will understand, however, when the VAT receipts, which from London theatres alone are greater than all Arts Council subsidy to theatre, start to dry up. This is because the talent has not been supported and nurtured to make the shows. Or they will when our export of theatre talent to the rest of the world is lessened. Or when Nicholas Hytner has to close the Cottesloe like one of his predecessors, Peter Hall, and there are boarded-up theatre buildings across the country.
If the Arts Council had not been able to draw on almost half of its £18m reserves, the cuts would have been much worse. It's going to be an edgy summer ahead, but rather than waiting around like lemons to have our pips squeezed, it's time for every theatre company in the country to pull together and remind Hunt of what it is they've been doing with their money – as well as the damage that more widespread cuts would do to the root and branch of British theatre.
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