Arts leaders hit back over MPs' attack on waste

12 April 2012

The arts world has hit back after an expert committee of MPs savaged the Arts Council.

Cultural leaders said the culture select committee was behind the times in its condemnation of the fund-giving body as wasteful and bureaucratic. They claim it has reinvented itself under chief executive Alan Davey and chairwoman Dame Liz Forgan.

They said the criticisms in a report published today were a distraction from this Wednesday's crucial announcement on how the Arts Council is to implement a 30 per cent budget cut.

More than 1,340 organisations, including most of the 850 currently funded, have applied for cash. Hundreds are expected to be disappointed. The Arts Council has calculated that even before new bodies applied the reduction in its budget meant up to 200 would lose out.

Sir Nicholas Hytner, of the National Theatre, said he had been critical of the Arts Council in the past. "But it seems to me now to be dealing with an impossible situation - a cut of 30 per cent - with calm and methodical decency."

Roy Clare, chief executive of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, said the parliamentary committee's decision to publish today was not helpful. "Giving the people responsible for funding the arts a good kicking won't make the arts stronger," he said.

Shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis said the Arts Council's leadership had demonstrated a commitment to reform. "It is Jeremy Hunt and his ministerial colleagues, not the Arts Council, who are responsible for the decisions which are leading to disproportionate arts cuts in London and across the country. Any attempt to pass the buck will be treated with the contempt it deserves," he said.

The report on funding of arts and heritage recommended the Arts Council sell artworks from its collection and queried whether it should fund so many orchestras. It said the cuts could be "disastrous" but that the previous levels of spending were unsustainable.

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