Just to back-pedal to spending on Defence, here's a snippet: were any ACE funded enterprise to run over-budget by even a small amount, it would likely mean curtains. Yesterday on the news I heard that the Nimrod replacement was behind time and £800 million adrift; yet compared to what this admits for the three biggest problem projects together, it's mere chicken feed....

On one hand I believe subsidies are  bad for the Arts. For example, they reduce choice: It is very difficult for new companies to establish themselves when in competition with incumbents that enjoy huge financial advantages.

On the other hand, it seems more reasonable for funding to take place at the local level where accountability is likely to be much greater.

I think that this is only a logical fallacy if you believe that humankind shares some kind of hive mind:



I'm not necessarily saying that I disagree with you: I think that meaningful assessment and criticism is possible, but your equation suggests that comprehension is both total and guaranteed. Neither of which can possibly be true, given that music as sign/signifier doesn't satisfy the unanimity required of language.

But I suspect that you didn't quite mean it that way...

I find this to be the greatest failing of the subsidy system in Britain - that money is ladled-out to performers directly.

If more (or all?) of the subsidy were distributed directly to venues,  it would have two main benefits - firstly, performers would have to offer interesting and attractive programmes that venues wished to purchase...  and secondly, a fairer geographic distribution of performances could be maintained.

When you become Minister of Culture I would imagine.

A problem I can see, Reiner, with your idea is that venues more than the other elements in the "production process" are likely to be most swayed by bums-on-seats proposals and anything less than a fairly sure success isn't going to be considered, don't you think? The main problem, it seems to me, is that there simply isn't enough to go round, so that any changes tend to do no more than shift a little bit of unfairness from one element of the system to another. As Matticus points out, many industries are subsidised in order to keep unemployment below a certain level deemed to be acceptable. What is so wrong with applying that logic to the "culture industry" too? Since the 1980s in the UK, and for clear ideological reasons, the fact that one of the functions of industry is to provide employment has been more or less suppressed in favour of a view that it does no more than provide a consumer commodity, and this has been extended to include artistic activity too.

I've kept my head below the parapet on this one until now, Richard   I agree that could be one way it would pan-out.  Alternatively it would give them the wherewithal to program more adventurously if they wished.  It would also move the decision-making about what material is deserving of subsidy into the hands of practitioners, and out of the hands of unaccountable pen-pushers at ACE.  That would provide a buffer against the "lead officers with no strategic perspective who pursued their own agendas" (singled-out for criticism in the  McIntosh Review). One individual with a highly personalised position - or a grudge - can currently pull the rug from under an organisation or ensemble's work nationally.  Moving the distribution of funds to the "user end" would be fairer, and would ensure that ongoing work which was successful wasn't subject to what I regret must be named "personal whims" by ACE officers.  I've seen little from ACE's operational methodology in the last 5 years to convince me that their officers have any better understanding than those running venues, touring networks, and so on.  I have far more confidence in someone like Jude Kelly than any of the ACE apparatchiks

Switzerland is a strange place, a bit like Galapagos.

Reiner, it seems to me that disbursing grants to venues is a good idea, but perhaps it could be even better to disburse to venues and creators that have decided to collaborate?

I don't agree with any of that, Ted! 

Local venue managers should (and in my experience often do) have a great deal more knowledge than career bureaucrats in organisations like the Arts Council.


I believe that precisely the opposite should be the case, at least in the sense that the smaller the number of people represented by a decision-making body the more likely it is that all their voices can be heard. The very phrase "local government" has been given a connotation of corruption and mismanagement, mostly by people like Thatcher (not her again? yes, 'fraid so) who "hated its freedoms" and fought and won a propaganda war against it.