Changes are afoot…

“Don’t moan, organise…” was the rallying cry from Arts Council England (ACE) Chair, Dame Liz Forgan, in a speech on The Changing UK Arts Landscape at Tate’s Family Conference last week. Applauding the resourceful solutions and ‘can do’ attitude of arts leaders in response to the most severe cuts to Government arts funding in decades, she pointed to “partnerships – of all shapes and sizes” as being the key to ACE being able to realise its own ambitions with the funding it now has, saying that these would now “have to happen on a bigger scale and involve many more organisations” than ever before. She confirmed that, faced with the loss of half its funding, ACE would have to re-think its role, but “must never become an ATM machine simply dispensing or witholding grants”. It will remain as a development agency for the arts. As part of their funding agreements, England’s flagship institutions will have to extend access nationally by touring and by maintaining an online presence, and they will be expected to “respond generously to the training and other needs of their sectors”; but, according to Forgan, ACE has no need to “apologise for investing in these great emblems of our culture as if they were the sole property of rich Londoners and somehow doing everyone else out of their rights”.