A howl of pain from the Pennines

Three years ago, my organisation’s biggest, longest, toughest project had come to a triumphant conclusion. A regional art prize, national awards, international conferences and foreign media. Still, this spring, we have two new features putting our work on network TV. But times are harder now, and the world has turned. And now we are one of the 206 clients that Arts Council England (ACE) will no longer support.

We are not used to rejection, and it hurts. We have to accept, though, that we failed to convince. We have to look at ourselves. But as the shock shifts through shame and embarrassment to anger, and as I look more and more at the bigger picture, I am getting really annoyed.

Lancashire has been treated with contempt. At County Hall, a Tory council has resisted ‘doing a Somerset’ and cutting by 100%, and has struggled to sustain the arts. The Arts Development Service has been a supportive partner to us clients and, I think, a diligent partner to ACE. They must wonder what on earth they have done wrong.

Their portfolio has been ripped in half. Four companies dumped (Folly and Storey Gallery in Lancaster, Prescap in Preston and us, MPA, in Pennine Lancashire). One more filleted beyond recognition (Ludus Dance cut by 67%), and another removed from the patch (Action Factory in unitary Blackburn).

This goes beyond renewal and natural selection. It is devastation, casually wrought. It feels a bittersweet, bewildering time, because there is also some very good news for some who really deserve it, like More Music (Morecambe), the Grundy Gallery in Blackpool, and Art Gene up in Barrow. And, well, you might say, they had to do it because there simply is no more money.

But there is. Look through the list and ACE is investing big new sums in a chosen few.
In the North West, there is big new investment in Manchester International Festival (MIF), a good boost for Liverpool Biennial, a handsome new grant for Kendal Arts International and its Lakes Alive outdoor entertainments. These are high impact, big-spending, headline-grabbing ephemera. But they don’t in themselves do much for our cultural infrastructure.

I love all these things. I loved Kraftwerk at MIF, and the Jeremy Deller procession, and even the pretentious nonsense of Obrist and his artist mates taking over the Opera House, just for its audacity. I want all those festivals to be strong. But in 2013 for the next MIF, ACE will have invested a million quid in those “18 extraordinary days”. And to do such things, they have to strip out the ‘cultural ecology’ of many small companies rooted in their communities.

What angers me most is that this ACE new spend will not buy new levels of activity. It is replacing lost investment. Because high profile ventures like these have all been suffering from the abolition of the regional development agencies (RDAs) and their huge investment programmes.

Things like MIF and Biennial are hugely important. They mean cultural tourism, and positive image, and inward investment. They put culture at the heart of regional development. They represent investment not subsidy, and they were absolutely the right things for RDAs to invest in. Strategic funding for strategic initiatives. But now the RDAs are being abolished, along with their budgets. And with the replacement Regional Growth Fund providing a paltry one tenth of the investment, what local politician will prioritise a culture-led project, however effective?

So while David Cameron talks of the vital importance of tourism, mainstream investment has been drained from the culture that provides its USP. And we cannot expect the urgent imperatives of regional development in the North to be understood by the ‘all in this together’ hoorays of the Bullingdon Club.

Hunt and Vaizey might have noticed, if ACE had felt impelled to sacrifice a few high profile festivities. But ACE has saved them that embarrassment, and has covered the Government’s tracks. We hear often of the ACE principle not to replace lost local authority funding, but it seems the rule is different for the RDAs. So why is ACE doing the Government’s dirty work?

NB Must get my tickets for MIF 2011…