Feature: Arts Council’s chief Dame Elizabeth Forgan holds her ground

Published: 10 February, 2011
by GERALD ISAAMAN

‘We’re not interested in hitting people over the head and making them go to see Shakespeare.’

MAYNARD Keynes, the great economist who founded the Arts Council by Royal Charter back in 1946, must be groaning in his grave. Having slashed its costs last year, Arts Council England has now been condemned to cutting 50 per cent of its already reduced administrative costs and 30 per cent of its funding over the next four years.

In stark terms, it  means reducing the organisation’s current budget of £449million to £349million by 2014.

The cuts ignore the fact that the Arts Council costs just 17p per week per person and that £15 is generated for every £1 the government invests in the arts, which employ some two million people.

Its administration costs are now down to a highly efficient 4.1 per cent having been reduced from 9.3 per cent to 6.6 per cent, a figure perhaps the government itself ought to treasure and aim to emulate.

The Arts Council is fighting back. The formidable Dame Liz Forgan, who lives in Regent’s Park Road, Primrose Hill, is well aware of the enormous burden that has been placed on Arts Council England, where she has held the embattled chair for barely two years.

Dame Liz tells me defiantly: “We understand the need for the Arts Council, in common with all public bodies, to continue to drive down costs. We cut our administrative costs dramatically last year – saving more than 15 per cent and reducing our staff numbers by 21 per cent. But cuts of the scale now being asked (another 50 per cent) mean we could not attempt to do the job we did before in the same way.

“We’ll continue to make the case to Department of Culture Media and Sport that ‘administration’ should involve the minimum number of staff, and that we need to properly understand the implications of our new museum and library responsibilities before we undertake another organisational review.

“But we must never become an ATM machine simply dispensing or withholding grants. We must remain a key development agency for the arts, advocating for, challenging and support­ing artistic enterprises large and small.”

Dame Liz, 66, who was news editor of the Ham & High during my editorship, faced a bruising grilling recently  from the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and the Arts.

Many are in favour of our MPs – distrusted though they are after the expenses scandal – probing into the spending of public funding. But,  as the session proved through 27 pages of transcript you can pick up on the internet, they lack sensitivity and often treat witnesses with little respect.

Dame Liz told one MP: “You have just put your finger on the tightrope that we are walking. It [the cuts] is bound to have a significant effect, but we are absolutely clear that it is not our job to spread gloom and despondency.

“We’re here to make sure that the arts are supported and protected in the best way we possibly can, and that is the balance we have to strike.”

That includes the future of ACE’s collection of 7,500 works of art by British artists ranging from Henry Moore and Francis Bacon to Bridget Riley and Damien Hirst, as well as taking on the role of the quango-quashed Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and coping with increased demands for funding.

She said: “You’ve got under our skin by suggesting the settlement in the spending review was in some way related to the view that the Sec­retary of State [Jeremy Hunt] might have said that we were not a well-run organisation.

“I must tell you that at no time did he ever say that to me.

“On the contrary. He said, ‘I know this is very tough, I know that you have already done sterling work on the costs of the Arts Council. I know I’m asking you to do something very harsh, but I’m afraid that’s the terms of the settlement.’

“So no, I don’t think the settlement should be seen as kind of punishment for the Arts Council failing in its duty, because I don’t think that’s right.” She added later: “As a principle, we should never punish success.”

Dame Liz revealed that talks were taking place with the Government Art Collection and the British Council to merge their public collections of art and rejected suggestions that by selling off a Francis Bacon it could help fund the spending gap.

To another question she responded: “I’m just catching my breath so that I don’t reply too vehemently. I believe passionately that the arts have the capacity to inspire, to educate and to have all manner of benefits for young people, and indeed old people, under the guise of education…

“It’s not a matter of us hitting artists over the head and saying, ‘You shall do education.’ 

“We’re not interested in hitting people over the head and making them go to see Shakespeare. We’re interested in not depriving people who would love it from hav­ing it… One of our five targets is to see that more people enjoy the arts.”

Labour MP David Cairns was surprisingly worried that the Arts Council’s funding went to “endless versions of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and art galleries full with watercolours of bowls of fruit.

Dame Liz told him: “That’s some great art you’ve just singled out there, but that is a very good question and we are well aware of it. We are clearly saying to people, ‘Do not come to us for money with a frightened, cowardly plan for the arts. We are here to encourage innovation and experiment.

“ ‘That is how you get good marks from the Arts Council – not mad things that the audience doesn’t want, not recycling safe old stuff. You don’t need our money to do that...’

“Public value resides in the ability to go to the National Theatre and see a brilliant production of Troilus and Cressida, and it also consists of being able to go to Derby and see the Arts Council Collection on view there, curated by a bunch of old people. It also consists of being able to go to some weird place in Hoxton and see lights going on and off. All of it is valuable to the public in the sense that it is an investment in the creativity of this country, which is not only a resource for us in terms of our psychology, our social cohesion and our pleasure and happiness, but it’s an economic resource and it’s something that is very important in the profile and identity of the nation as it’s seen abroad. All of that is public value.”

Meanwhile, Alan Davey, the Arts Council’s  chief executive, who was quizzed alongside Dame Liz, revealed that ACE faced the task of coping with 1,340 grant applications for next year, 60 per cent more than usual, and that “something like 600 applications are going to get a straight No.”

• The full (uncorrected) transcript of the meeting is at: www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/ cmcumeds/uc464-vii/uc46401.htm