Show must go on, despite ‘drastic’ cuts to Nitro's funding

Published: 22nd April, 2011
by PETER GRUNER

BRITAIN’s oldest black theatre company, based in Barnsbury, will “definitely continue” despite losing all its Arts Council funding.

Nitro’s artistic director Felix Cross insisted that the black musical theatre company in Brewery Road, will search for alternative funding when the current £273,000 grant runs out next year. 

“We have only lost our funding – not our creativity, nor our business, nor our spirit,” Mr Cross added. “We have had many messages of support and the first was from Arts Council itself, insisting there should still be a relation­ship between themselves and Nitro. It’s a bit like a jilted lover being told by their ex that they still care, but maybe just as good friends. Never­theless, I am somewhat encouraged by that.”

Mr Cross said he felt the “severely diminished pot” the Arts Council had been given by meant they had been forced to cut com­panies. He told The Stage newspaper: “The govern­ment simply doesn’t care beyond its financial bottom line. The Coal­ition at its highest level is making the most drastic cutbacks, on a scale even Margaret That­cher didn’t dream of.”

Meanwhile, he accused culture minister Jeremy Hunt of having an attitude towards the arts world that was “smug, superior and entirely uninformed”.