Small cultural organisations are under serious threat from the spending review. More cuts are scheduled from both Local Authority and ACE. Mind the Gap’s Artistic Director, Tim Wheeler, sounds a siren to warn of the devastation about to be wreaked by a perfect storm.
Tug o’ War
NB: This post is significantly enhanced if read whilst humming the tune ‘Eternal Father Strong to Save’
In recent weeks three Northern based science museums have been under threat. This has been met with a huge upswell of support from politicians, celebrities and cultural pundits. It has been heartening to see a united response from the cultural sector that see the necessity of Cultural Flagships like the National Media Museum.
The flagship organisations have tremendous ability to harness media attention and this has played a significant part in securing their future. How can some of this attention be used to assist smaller organisations who are faced with the same storm, and who could be about to take a disproportionate hit?
In advance of the spending review ACE was asked by Government to model cuts of 5%, 10% and 15%. ACE warned that even a 5% cut would reduce the National Portfolio Organisations from 635 to 400. To do this ACE used a model of ‘the smallest goes first’, reducing the size of the portfolio by stacking the NPOs in order of grant size then cutting from the bottom.
Like all arts and cultural organisations the investment Mind the Gap receives from ACE and our Local Authority has been ‘salami sliced’ over the past few years. Adding all the slices together the company has lost £100k in the last 3 years. That’s a heck of a lot of salami! It’s equivalent to 15 places on our actor training course Making Theatre or 2 entry level jobs or one major tour a year. We run a tight ship and are as lean as we can be.
It’s time to stand up for our smaller arts and cultural organisations that bring depth and diversity to our cultural lives. These organisations are the ‘cultural tugboats’ that keep the fleet afloat. They are the cultural innovators that create value. Powerful for their size, they are strongly built to perform specific functions. Part of their role is to push and pull the larger institutions allowing them to navigate deep but narrow waters. They offer opportunity for training and professional development, particularly for those unable to access through mainstream channels.
Having spent 25 years at the helm of Mind the Gap I have had the privilege to watch the professional development of the majority of arts professionals within the region. Without exception those cultural leaders in our large cultural institutions have developed their talents and honed their skills in smaller organisations. Freelance artists too make a living from a wide portfolio of engagement with big and small. If we allow the continued erosion of the smaller and more diverse organisations the larger ones will find themselves unable to find the right talent, and may flounder and run aground frighteningly quickly. And more artists will be out of work.
We must avoid the David & Goliath arguments that pitch small against large or freelance artist against organisation. We are not only interconnected, we are inter-dependent. Our future livelihoods depend on a strong and vibrant sector with organisations of all shapes and sizes. The spending review is a one-year settlement. Together we must argue for more investment based on our combined strength. With our help ACE and the Local Authorities need the courage to push back at central government and they need to offer a safe harbour, not just for the flagships but for the entire cultural fleet. We are all part of the business case that makes this island great.
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Mind the Gap is an award-winning, independent Bradford based theatre company. We create high quality work through collaboration between learning disabled and non-disabled artists.
This Autumn Mind the Gap is touring an adaptation of Treasure Island and is working with Jez Colborne on Gift, a PRS New Music Commission based on the story of the Trojan Horse to be played in, on and around a shipping container. Hence all the sea references I guess!
Couldn’t agree more!
You’ve put your finger on something with this Tim.
I think the problem is in part that people aren’t encouraged to participate at a local level.
That is a problem likely to be made worse as people have less cash with which to engage in discretionary cultural activities.
Economic pressures mean people are working harder.
Technically, people are being pulled by the demands of keeping up with digital technology, all of which means they have less time to engage in culture, too.
The erosion of cultural diversity is circular in that regard.
At what point will that be factored into strategy? It’s such an obvious recipe for a civilisation disaster sometimes I wonder.
Indeed we keep and add tremendous value to the work of the larger arts companies often without them knowing it! Fostering Inter cultural and intra cultural creative activity comes from the grass roots where we are based and work which is seldom the priority of the ‘big fish’ or tankers out there. If this connection is severed then great arts will not be for everyone but for the priveliged few!
I think there’s a risk that we just associate the arts with performance too. Participation (by which I mean everything from thinking up ideas, writing, designing, performing, technical support, watching, sharing and reviewing) has an intrinsic value in terms of people’s mental and social well being. This makes people happier and more confident and more skilled and all that stuff. The tricky thing is it’s difficult to demonstrate directly the health benefits and making yourself more employable and reduced demand on social services, but it’s definitely there. I think that may be the argument to win otherwise it’s just seen as a ‘nice to have’ that is first to go when we’re talking austerity.
I think there is a huge cross over with arts and many other sectors – health, education, potentially housing etc – all really as arts is (or should be) part of life – remember the old song ‘bread and roses’? We need our basic needs met – yes – but our souls need more than that – and that’s where the arts come in.
And all the arts – thats where the tug boats come in – we need all the different sizes of arts organisations, operating at all the different levels that they do in order to keep the ecosystem flourishing – remove one level or layer and you’ll kill the lot.
So yes, Tim – sound the alarms – let’s get fighting for the tug boats too and not just the big liners!
Found flounder foundering?
Fleet is a great word. A little like theatre is means more than one thing.
I’d like to reimagine Tim’s argument by pulling apart the fleet
The problem with incremental erosion, as Tim states, is that it hits different parts of the fleet disproportionately. And the impact on the small to medium scale could be very damaging indeed
I would like to posit with a higher risk strategy to counter this
Lets pull the fleet apart.
Top slice the major organisations – the ones that routinely soak up the bulk of the available ACE budget – and let the DCMS fund them directly, or set up a separate arms length mechanism like Australia did with its Major Organisations Board.
Powerful power brokers can converse about power.
I dont wont to be a tugboat to these flagships. I don’t want the public, whoever they may be, to see the work of small to medium scale companies and the artists working with them as adjuncts to something of “proper” value.
Let the big guns do their own thing. Then they can stop wheeling out people called Nick to speak on our behalf, brilliant rhetoricians though they are.
We stop hiding, pretending that we are all part of the same ecology, when economically and politically we simply are not. We can also stop pretending that we have to aspire to be someone else. We can then set about working with a refocused ACE on redefining the narrative given to the different sections of the public about what we are and what we do.
Otherwise we are simply at the mercy of the largesse of others and our critical success factor becomes our ability to feed and fuel the larger ships.
Quietly the small to medium scale and freelance will of course continue to have relationships with all parts of this fleet and others. But what we will then be able to concentrate on is the agility and responsiveness to changing circumstances which really makes us fleet.
Good points, well made! I did consider extending the metaphor to include privateers, pirates and pedaleos to ensure a wider range of political viewpoints but think something would have snapped!
*pedalos
Agree wholeheartedly with your comments, Tim. We need the smaller as well as the larger arts and cultural organisations. The arguments that have been made about the wider value of the National Media Museum can and should be made in different ways about smaller organisations like Mind the Gap. As well as their intrinsic cultural value (very important!), there are social, educational, economic and other arguments to be made in different ways for virtually all arts/cultural organisations. Money wisely spent on the arts and culture can actually save money elsewhere (eg health and wellbeing) and/or generate other money (eg tourism spend). I also worry about the ACE approach of cutting from the smallest first. I can see that there may be an argument for not spreading a reduced amount of money too thinly but it’s far too simplistic to say we’ll cut the smaller ones and just concentrate resources on the larger organisations.
Well said, Tim.
This is also the case for those of us who work in arts education. If the smaller organisations go, so too do many of the opportunities for our students to gain work experience, mentoring and employment. Local, small to medium scale companies are a vital part of the cultural landscape and should be supported both financially and in terms of infrastructure.
It’s really tough out there at the moment and many smaller companies are struggling to maintain a presence and in some cases have had to take drastic measures to continue their artistic work. Tim, I’m very much with you (and Jo) on needing tug boats as well as liners. Trouble is, many tug boats are floundering in heavy seas, and we’re a little short of lifeboats, to say the least…