Talk about the Art of Waste, The New Culture Forum has let itself down here. This attack on the Arts Council is not the way forward and quite frankly what a complete waste of their time and money there is nothing new in this report it has all been said before. It worries me that this sort of power struggle approach does not do the arts and cultural sector as a whole any favours what so ever. I cannot find any commentary on the debate itself as I would like to know what the comments were particularly from someone like Colin Tweedy who has struggled to keep hold of and direct A&B, that organisation has more problems than the Arts Council and without ACE funding A&B would not survive despite what it likes to put out there, its business support is very thin. I was looking forward to what the NCF could do but this level of approach is not going to strengthen anything, get a grip people and take a look at what really needs to be done and if you are going to attempt to be better then the Arts Council then you really need to get it right!

The report has got it exactly right in at least some respects. Bureaucrats should not pretend to guess what artists might do next. Nor should they try to prescribe this. Artists are the source of art. They will lead the arts into uncharted and unpredictable territory.

However, the report is less convincing in other respects.

For example, Arts Council England has been spending vastly differing sums per capita on regularly funded organisations in two regions:

1.62 pounds per capita in the East, compared to 22.62 pounds in London (2007-8).

Such shameful inequity will not be solved by artistic expertise within ACE. Nor can it be wished away. Competent management is the answer. The current situation places an unfair ceiling on the achievement of artists who happen to live in the East, or indeed anywhere outside London. The arts outside London need to be managed back to life.

Take another example. The Conservative Arts Task Force made an important statement: "We strongly believe that the great achievements of human civilisations should be available to and encountered by everybody". They used the plural of civilisation, no doubt owing to their knowledge of history.

For example, the digit zero and other Indian (or so-called Arabic) numerals form the backbone of life in England. They are now as English as Shakespeare. Nobody would be so foolish as to campaign for re-introducing Roman numerals, which at one time were the backbone of British heritage. Yet ethnic minorities in England, like the hapless people who live outside London, suffer grevious under-funding at the hands of ACE. This waste of talent will not be solved by increased artistic expertise in ACE. Competent management is required, to remedy the situation.

The report unfortunately pays little explicit attention to ACE's Royal Charter, whose first object is:
"To develop and improve the knowledge, understanding and practice of the arts".
This is an object that promises returns to everyone in England. ACE's Royal Charter is the yardstick by which ACE's performance can and should be measured.

The author would win even more respect from economists if he analysed the effect of public funding to organisations. If an organisation can raise 65% of its average budget from private sources, why shouldn't it raise 100% from such sources? Let it raise ticket prices, ramp up its bid for private funds and endowments, and stop picking the pocket of the taxpayer. There is no good reason for the taxpayer involuntarily to subsidise the pleasures of the rich.

Let public funding of arts organisations be reserved for those organisations who do not charge entry fees to the public. This is the case with schools and hospitals, not to mention museums. Arts organisations should not expect to be treated differently.

There is a difference between creation and marketing. Curating and artistic direction are important functions, but they cannot be mistaken for the creation of art. The report is right in emphasising that ACE needs to respect individual artists for their unique role in the arts. It is artists who use the heritage of today as a springboard to create the heritage of tomorrow. The Shakespeares, Constables and Purcells of tommorow are not to be found among curators or bureaucrats, but among individual artists. Perhaps even among the disabled or minority artists in the East of England. Who knows? That is why competent managers are required to remedy the shameful under-funding of vast sections of the population.

It may be that the arts have been mismanaged to near-death. Competent management would seem to be part of the solution.

Repeating the mantra of "competent management" will not make it so. What is "competent management" in arts, apart from ensuring that your client, if you are an agent, gets an adequate amount of money? The moment you announce that bureaucrats, however competent, should be in charge of the arts you are doomed. All bureaucratic organizations will have as an aim their own survival and growth. Other things will not matter and, in any case, a bureaucratic organization is in no position to decide what kind of art or arts should there be in the country. They are not spendin their own money, they have no taste as an entity. They are merely deciding on some policy and putting it into effect.

The role of those who manage taxpayers' money, whether DCMS or ACE, is not to impose their artistic judgement. Rather, it is to ensure the availability of opportunity to anyone who wishes to "develop and improve" their own "knowledge, understanding and practice of the arts". This is the duty imposed by the Royal Charter of ACE. To the extent that this duty is fulfilled, the managers within DCMS or ACE are earning their keep. If they neglect this duty, such as by under-funding vast sections of the population, they should be challenged by taxpayers. Taxpayers elect and pay representatives partly to mount such challenges.

Arts organisations are no different from any other bureaucracy. They have a strong interest in building empires and boosting the compensation of bureaucrats within the arts organisation. It is the job of DCMS or ACE to ensure that the public is served according to the Royal Charter of ACE, and economically so. There is no substitute for checks and balances. Such checks and balances rely heavily on monitoring where taxpayers' money is going, and to what extent it is furthering the objects of the Royal Charter.

Let bureaucrats and managers, whether within DCMS or ACE or arts organisations, be competent administrators. Let them not pretend that their artistic judgement is worth any more than that of the next person.

I can't write much on this, too worn out by it.

I have three comments only:

Peer evaluation,

Peer evaluation,

Peer evaluation.

It is the only hope now.

I write as a staff member of the Arts Council; someone painfully aware of its managerial failings, its stifling bureaucracy and navel-gazing tendencies. So I know there is an intelligent critique to be made of the Arts Council and of public funding for the arts in general, but this poorly researched and incoherent report isn't it. The author has little understanding of the workings of ACE and sadly appears to have made little attempt to do any research beyond presenting a random selection of quotes out of context in order to fit his basic premise that the Arts Council should be abolished. Neither does he appear to have much understanding of the delicate arts ecology or the broader creative industries in which it sits.

One thing I do know is that ACE is full of highly experienced and passionate people (many of whom are trained arts practioners) who believe that public investment in artists and arts organisations can enable them to take artistic risks and to reach a much wider audience without having to pander to the conservative interests of wealthy investors. Any analysis of ACE spending on administration needs to consider the extent to which its staff are out in the field, spotting and nurturing talented artists and emerging arts organisations and building networks and partnerships. Those salary costs are directly supporting this development work - not just the paperwork.

Sidwell does raise the important question of artistic judgement. The truth is, ACE officers do need to exert a degree of judgement in assessing project funding applications and the ongoing performance of regularly funded organisations (RFOs). But this doesn't mean that their personal taste limits the kind of work that gets funded, as any analysis of the thousands of grants awarded each year or of the portfolio of 800 RFOs would demonstrate. But with any investment decision, someone has to decide who gets the money. We could ask the public to do it, but a cursory glance at the Classic FM Hall of Fame (for example) proves that 'crowd-sourcing' artistic judgement, while it may not opt for bad art, generally opts for the most comforting and 'nice' art. We could ask a panel of artists to make decisions - a recipe for cliquery if ever there was one - but are artists themselves the best people to apply the 'public value' test and consider value for money, accessibility, etc, alongside the artistic ideas. There's no easy answer to this!

What we do need is a clearer understanding of the role of the Arts Council as a development agency, particularly as regards regeneration, social inclusion and education, as it is here that the 'arms length' principle currently dwindles to nothing at times. ACE is about to become much smaller, and hopefully simpler and more coherent as a national body. It is looking closely at how its workings can be more transparent and in what way the public could have greater involvement in future.

Sure, if you think the arts should be purely commercial then you don't need an Arts Council. But start making significant cuts to public investment and you'd soon notice the difference. It would be the smaller, most innovative organisations and individual artists who'd suffer the most. We'd regress to a tired but safe repertory of well-known 'classics'. Which I guess the conservatives at NCF would probably rather like, but it sounds a bit dull to me.

I respond to the comments of the Arts Council staff member above.

I sympathise, and I do not agree with the recommendations of this report. However the findings do resonate my experience. I do not want to see the demise of Arts Council, but I do think we need reform urgently to end this crisis which has been ongoing for too long.

Sidwell, and you too, raise the important question of artistic judgement.

How can we possibly have an effective Arts Council where there is no contributuon / representation of key stakeholders?
It's absurd. Bonkers. Its like building the Brooklyn Bridge without engineers.

We need peer evaluation, guidance and collaboration across all OUR funding streams, RFO, G4A, managed funds, etc. Arts Council needs to decide who its real stakeholders are. And introduce themselves again. And fast.

I agree with the points made by the Arts Council staff on 4th July 2009. I am not a member of the Arts Council staff. I have been working in the arts since the 1980's as a theatre practioner, visual artist and over the last 15 years, developing new audiences for arts and cultural events and activities. And it's in relation to the latter that I want to raise my concern about the poor judgement and findings of this report. In 1998, the Arts Council launched The New Audiences Programme, which ran up to 2003. It was probably the most significant audience and artist development programme to have existed in this country. I worked on a number of projects (and there were 100's of other projects) across the country as a result of this programme that were significant in bringing individuals and communities that had historically not engaged with theatres, museums, galleries, festivals and performance arts spaces to experience new arts in new spaces. This work was important beyond the bums on seats scenerio: sustainable partnerships were brokered; audiences became artists and administrational staff; there was a two way learning process of different cultures, experiences and histories; new stories were written and told; the art itself was diverse and of high quality. Other countries used the lessons learnt in this programme as a template to begin developing community engagement, audience development and artistic development work with their own arts institutions. This was just one signficant programme of activities that took place over the last 10 years in the life of the Arts Council and its' partners.

Before 1998, I had been doing audience development work but there was no infrastructure or real resources in place which allowed this kind of work to take place that had a sustainable and national impact. Before 1998, my experience was that mainstream arts activities were accessible to the very few and my concern is that these kinds of reports and supporters of the abolition of the Arts Council are apart of an elite movement of artists who don't understand the real importance of engaging a wider voice, which is crucial for the development of the arts sector in this country, which requires real resources and the support of an institution such as the Arts Council.

It's never been about the diluting of the art or the artists vision but the fact that art that is funded by the public purse should be accessible by all of the public. However, I know that there are flaws within the Arts Council and we should not be complacent about this but to work with the Arts Council to address these.