Wales

Equity has announced that its members in the chorus of the Welsh National Opera have voted to pause their first and second days of strike action planned for 21 September and 29 September, following "productive discussions" with management over the past week.

Action short of strike will still be taken on those dates, on the opening night of Rigoletto and throughout the season as originally planned.

A third date of planned strike action on 11 October is still in place.

The union hopes the pause will allow for further talks, with the goal of reaching an agreement with WNO management that addresses concerns over job losses, pay cuts and compulsory redundancies.

On Saturday (21 September), the chorus will leaflet the public outside the Wales Millennium Centre, joined by members of WNO’s orchestra, represented by the Musicians’ Union. In July, the orchestra also voted in favour of potential strike action over similar cuts and proposals from management. 
 
Simon Curtis, Equity Wales Official, said: “We’re encouraged by recent positive engagement from WNO management so far, which is why our members made the decision to pause strike action. However, we are not out of the woods yet and an agreement ensuring the jobs and livelihoods of the chorus has not been reached.

"Our desire throughout this process has been to work with the board and management, and we hope to continue in constructive discussions with management in the coming weeks. In addition, we call on the WNO’s board to meet with us so they can better understand the circumstances of our members and the impact of the proposals that they support being put in place.

"Meanwhile, the concerns of the chorus will continue to be heard through action short of strike, and the strike mandate remains live – meaning full strike action is still possible and will go ahead as planned on the 11 October if sufficient progress is not made.”

Arts Council Wales has announced it is pausing two funding schemes targeted at educators and learners for review.

The Go and See and Have a Go funds will close at 12pm on 3 October and reopen on 4 November.

Go and See offers grants up to £1,000 to enable teachers in Welsh state-maintained schools to take learners to see high-quality art in venues across Wales.

Meanwhile, Have a Go aims to facilitate hands-on activities or workshops that focus on the expressive arts with grants of up to £1,500 to state-maintained schools, pupil referral units and arts and cultural organisations in Wales.

In announcing the change, ACW said: "Our popular grants for schools, artists, and arts organisations help support access to high-quality arts activity for learners and teachers and have had a huge impact across Wales.

"We are reviewing both our Go and See and Have a Go grants, and they will be temporarily closed from 12pm on 3 October.

"Please be assured that both schemes will reopen again on Monday 4 November 2024."

An independent review has found "significant failures" in the governance of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland, between 2019 and 2021.

The report found significant payments were made to former co-directors Neil Murray and Graham McLaren during this time. Each received redundancy payments of more than €63,000, while McLaren received a further €110,000 following a bullying and harassment inquiry against him.

The investigation found the theatre paid more than €1m in direct costs to the former directors, legal fees and its human resources investigation. The country’s arts council withheld part of the theatre’s annual €8m budget due to the handling of the case.

Abbey Theatre has only recently published part of the report, which was commissioned as a condition of funding from the arts council, although it was completed last year. The theatre says "some key actions" have already been taken to implement its recommendations.

"The board is mindful of its responsibility to provide accountability and transparency in its governance arrangements and their application, and of its obligation to correct course and make changes when that responsibility has not been met," a statement from the theatre said.

"The board acknowledges that the review process has been constructive on both fronts."

Welsh National Opera (WNO) chorus members of the performers' union Equity are being balloted for industrial action in a dispute relating to proposals to cut their pay by at least 15% and to reduce and rebalance the size of the chorus.

The ballot commences this week and will run until September 4.

Management at the opera house have cited ongoing financial difficulties caused by cuts to their funding from both Arts Council England and Arts Council of Wales as the reason for the proposals.

“WNO management seem intent on pushing through these changes at speed under the misguided impression that this will, in some way, allow our members the opportunity to maximise the possibility of other employment,” said Simon Curtis, Equity’s National and Regional Official for Wales and South West England.

“These proposals, however, are unsustainable for our members and potentially catastrophic for the sector more widely in the UK,” he said.

Curtis added that 80% of Equity’s WNO members thought the cuts would have a high or significant impact on their personal finances, with 78% saying they may have to leave the opera.

“Such is the precarity of their situation over half (56%) say they would have to leave the industry altogether, while a further third (32%) say that they may have to,” Curtis said. “As their union, we will keep all options open to fight an attack on our members' livelihoods.”

In July, Musicians' Union (MU) members at WNO voted in favour of a full strike to protest management plans to make the orchestra part-time at 85% of their current hours, reducing their pay by 15%.

In the ballot, 81.3% of voters favoured full strike action, with 96.9% favouring action short of a strike, based on a turnout of 88.9%. The MU said any action won't be announced until September, before the start of the new season.

National Youth Arts Wales (NYAW) and the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) have announced a new partnership to support music education in Wales.

The scheme will focus on three strands in its first year. One of these will involve identifying “cold spots in provision”, and running projects to boost young people’s skills and experience in areas such as choral singing and stringed instruments.

The organisations will also support each other’s youth representation programmes. This will include sharing experience to develop new best practice models and giving young people opportunities for “training, influencing policy and work experience”.

In addition, the ABRSM and NYAW will gather and bring together data to help understand the strengths and gaps within instrument learning, and which parts of Wales need more support.

Evan Dawson, Chief Executive of NYAW, said his organisation was excited to begin a partnership with “one of the world’s leading music education organisations”.

ABRSM’s Deputy Head of Engagement James Welburn said he expected the initiative to be “engaging and energetic”.

The Welsh government has accepted the majority of recommendations from a report into the role of its conservation service Cadw but has repeatedly warned that some have “financial implications” that would be “challenging to deliver in the current financial climate”.

In the government’s official response, Cabinet Secretary Lesley Griffiths welcomed the recommendations as “helpful and supportive” in intention and pledged to begin work to implement those that could be taken forward short term, “taking account of the difficult budgetary environment, which is unlikely to improve in the near future”.

Commissioned in December 2022, the review was set up to examine the success of a 2017 decision for Cadw to remain as an internal agency in the Welsh government, while benefiting from increased operational and commercial freedoms.

Led by Roger Lewis and published last year, the report made 29 recommendations grouped into six themes, including clarifying the role of the Cadw board and modifying how Welsh government processes and procedures apply to Cadw, particularly regarding HR.

The report called for changes in senior roles, including the reinstatement of an Additional Accounting Officer - suspended early in the pandemic - to be held by the Head of Cadw, whose title would change to Chief Executive Officer.

Griffiths supported the recommendation and the report's call for a specific budget to be set up in addition to Cadw’s existing funding to advance the proposals, including the hiring of more staff, but added that the plan needed to be “fully costed and affordable” given the “challenging financial context we are currently operating in”.

The recommendations also call for a closer relationship between the board and government, including holding twice yearly meetings with the Deputy Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism and redefining the board’s role as “more strategic” and “advisory”, which Grithiss accepted in “in principle”.

Issues surrounding the recruitment, promotion and retention of Cadw staff and the ability to appoint emergency cover were also highlighted, with the report noting that many employees are “hands-on, technical craftspeople who have very little in common with the wider civil-service ways of working”.

Griffiths recognised that civil service processes and procedures “can be seen as a barrier” to working in “an efficient and timely manner” and may “appear to restrict the flexible and agile way in which Cadw needs to operate”.

However, she added that senior government officials would need to consider these recommendations further as Cadw must “act responsibly” and “be able to demonstrate value for public money”. 

“It is important the civil service principles around equality, fair and open processes are retained, underpinned by Welsh government values of creativity, fairness, partnership and professionalism,” she said.

Responding to the suggestion to establish a Welsh school of heritage and conservation skills, Griffiths said she could “see the merit” but that, “given current financial constraints,” it was “unlikely to be achievable in the short term without significant external partnership funding.” 

Elsewhere, the Culture Minister said she was “not convinced” that a separate cultural tourism strategy is currently necessary beyond the Culture Strategy for Wales that the government is currently consulting on or that Cadw should be allowed greater freedoms and flexibility in “all aspects of the press, PR, marketing and website activities of Cadw”.

Speaking about a recommendation that Cadw should embrace the Welsh government’s Economic Action Plan, in part by selling Welsh products in its shops and promoting Welsh companies to run the cafes at sites, Griffiths cautioned she was “mindful this has to be undertaken in the context of procurement rules and obtaining best value for public money”.

She added there could be merit in investigating the creation of a standalone, arm's-length charity that could benefit Cadw by applying for grants and receiving bequests and confirmed that an audit and review of access to Cadw sites for disabled people would be conducted.

Welsh actor Michael Sheen and his fellow countrymen, The Manic Street Preachers, have renewed their backing of an arts education fund launched three years ago to help pay for the education of aspiring actors.

Over the last three years, the Mab Gwalia Welsh drama student scholarship has supported 11 actors, funding their training with up to £15,000 each academic year.

Speaking about plans to renew the scheme for another three years, Sheen said: "We’re in the midst of an arts emergency in Wales. Cuts are taking away tongues at the very moment our stories need to be shouted loudest."

"Mab Gwalia has emerged to provide support to give tomorrow’s talent a platform and pathway to develop their craft and tell our truth to the world. But the door is open to others with shared values who can contribute financially to the fund."

Performers' union Equirty has voiced its opposition to Welsh National Opera's (WNO) plans to cut the salary of its chorus members and threaten compulsory redundancy.

WNO, which has warned of financial difficulties after having its core funding cut, plans to reduce the full-time contracts of its chorus members to 45 weeks with a salary cut of at least 15% a year.

Equity says that recent “opaque proposals” for changes to its members' terms and conditions have been tabled, which would “fundamentally undermine the job security of this highly skilled professional ensemble.” 

The changes mirror those put forward for the orchestra at WNO and follow contract renegotiations for the chorus and orchestra at English National Opera earlier this year.

The union said it has “always been open to the [negotiation] process” and “believed that despite the challenging financial situation the company faced, [WNO] would protect the chorus.” 

“[We] will not accept compulsory redundancies or the desire of WNO management to make contracts ‘flexible’ solely to their own advantage while adding the precarity of an unsustainable cut to chorus members’ basic earnings,” said the union.

“ Equity’s resistance to the current proposals cannot, and will not, be contingent on the decisions of funders.” 

WNO receives National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) funding from both Arts Council England (ACE) and Arts Council Wales (ACW), but its ACE funding was reduced from £6.24m to £4m a year for the 2023-26 period, a 35% reduction, while it receives £4.1m a year from ACW.

Last June, an open letter from former members of the opera warned that a strategic review would reduce the number of full-time orchestra and chorus members to meet funding conditions imposed by ACE.