It has been 8 weeks of waiting but yesterday, on Wednesday the 30th of March, across the country subsidised arts organisations finally found out what funding they would receive for 2012-15.
It was a mixed bag of results. Surprisingly, even in economically difficult times, some organisations have come out with excessive increases, including my home from home in 2010, the Barbican Centre. Now even though I love the Barbican and acknowledge the fact that it supports virtually every art form going, does it really need an increase of 108.7%?
Overall, London organisations did well and virtually half of Arts Council England’s funding is still centred in London. However, there were still cuts in London with Riverside Studios losing all of its funding, as well as a personal favourite of mine, The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs.
What shocked me was how many organisations were cut. There used to be 849 RFOs and now there are just 695 national portfolio organisations. On the surface that is a cut of 154 organisations, but with 110 new organisations being added to the mix, it is in fact over 250 organisations that lost the funding. What is going to happen to those organisations? Will they be able to continue without the funding? Will the reinvent their economical model or will they fade into the background and become a long lost memory?
