Examination of Witnesses (Questions 184-199)
INDEPENDENT THEATRE
COUNCIL
1 FEBRUARY 2005
Chairman: Lady and gentlemen,
thank you very much indeed for coming to see us today. Nick Hawkins
will open the questioning.
Q184 Mr Hawkins: Good
morning. I was very interested in what you have said to us about
your criticism of certain aspects of the discretionary funding
by the Arts Council and it is put to us that some of your members
say how good do you have to be to get Arts Council funding and
how bad do you have to be to lose it? Apparently some of your
members say in answer to the first question you can be blindingly
brilliant and still not get funded and in answer to the second
question you can be absolutely awful for years and years and years
and what you get is to apply for stabilisation and the Arts Council
will give you a consultant at taxpayers' expense. If it is the
view of the ITC that the Arts Council has far too many regular
clients who get funded all the time and not enough discretion,
how would you change the way the Arts Council deals with independent
theatre?
Ms Jones: At the
moment about £3 million comes to our membership through the
grant for the arts and certainly it is project funding that is
a very good way of starting a new organisation up or introducing
new talent into the sector. There is always a squeeze on that
and I think our biggest fear when there was an announcement of
a squeeze on public funding in relation to the arts was that it
is usually project funding that goes first. Revenue clients are
difficult to shift. We are aware not just in the larger scale
but also amongst our own membership, to be perfectly honest, that
there are revenue clients who have been there for years who really
are not being challenged and are not being expected to be particularly
accountable for the way that they are conducting themselves. There
is such a huge discrepancy between the revenue client and project
funding client. That is a big worry for the sector I think because,
as we also said in our submission, the new work which you are
obviously all very concerned to see happening is coming from this
sector—new writers, new actors, new directors and they are
the theatre of the future and the theatre of tomorrow.
Q185 Mr Hawkins: You seem
to be particularly critical of the Arts Council's use of consultants.
Can you expand a bit on whether you feel taxpayers' money is really
being squandered in that regard?
Ms Jones: I think
it is a danger to the Arts Council's reputation. I think it is
a good organisation, it is very important that we have it, and
it is funding some very good work very well, but I think the constant
use and perhaps over-use of consultants damages their reputation
with the public and also damages their credibility with the sector.
I would like to think that they have the right staff in place
to make the kind of decisions that need to be made. I think perhaps
there is a lack of bravery sometimes and a feeling if you give
it to a consultant they will give the bad news. So I think there
is a danger in using them. We would like to see the Arts Council
being a bit more courageous and relying on their own staff.
Q186 Mr Hawkins: In other
words, if they were not spending or perhaps on occasions wasting
money on consultants there could be more taxpayers' money available
for the project funding which would provide some of the new work
that we all want to see?
Ms Jones: Absolutely
and that was one of the promises of the restructuring, which incidentally
also used a lot of consultants. When the announcement was made
that the restructuring of the Arts Council was going to happen,
our fear was that a lot would be dealt with by consultants and
that seems to have happened. We would like to see a lot more of
that channelled straight into the arts.
Q187 Alan Keen: May I
carry on on the same theme. You said you do not like consultants
being involved because you think it is the Arts Council passing
the buck a little bit. Did you think the reorganisation of the
Arts Council would mean that we would see more regionalisation
of it? Do you think though now that should be extended and that
the theatres and the arts themselves should have some sort of
direct representation back to help make the decisions themselves?
It seems that the Arts Council is independently making decisions,
obviously with the best interests in mind of the arts world, but
do you think there is a way in which the leaders and representatives
could be involved and there could be a long-term plan so that
new bodies would have a chance of being brought into the funding
earlier? What plans would you like to see?
Mr Stride: My perception
is that the Arts Council are doing that very actively. I have
lost count of the number of steering groups and consultative and
focus groups I am asked to go on on a whole range of issues. I
think the Arts Council is beginning quite seriously to consult
its constituency in the best ways of developing and particularly
within theatre is looking increasingly at the way in which it
might be able to fund producers and support producers as a more
effective way of making sure that new work gets onto the stage.
Q188 Alan Keen: Did that
come from the changes that you said you were pleased about? Did
that come from the recent reorganisation?
Mr Stride: To some
extent I think so in that head office, as it were, has had to
look very carefully at what its role is and has recognised that
more and more it needs to be making policy, consulting, and shaping
the ways in which we can best develop the arts, so that is a role
that it has found itself delivering.
Q189 Alan Keen: What areas
are really being neglected now? Established organisations need
to know they have got some definite funding coming in over a period
of years. It would be ludicrous to draw it out of a hat so that
suddenly all this funding to these organisations stopped and started
with other ones. How do we get over that problem? Obviously there
is going to be no vast increase in funding so that another 25%
of organisations could be brought into the funding orbit, but
what is the answer to that conundrum? You need long-term funding,
you need to be able to plan and yet that means new bodies are
going to get nothing. That is the point you were making. How do
we get round that?
Ms Jones: I think
we do need both. It is certainly very obvious when small companies
get revenue funding that it is a fantastic opportunity, as I said
in my submission. It can often encourage that company to improve
the quality of their work and increase the amount of work they
are doing, and we have seen some excellent results of that in
the theatre group. I think the problem is more about how the Arts
Council monitors and maintains its portfolio and how it frees
up enough money to create realistic access to new project funding
and also then sustainable project funding. There needs to be a
ladder. There is not a funding ladder at the moment. If you happened
to have the luck to get in 10 years ago you are there and there
is very little likelihood of being removed. If you are a very
good company just trying to start out you may be lucky enough
to get a piece of funding, but you are not necessarily likely
to have your success rewarded through additional funding through
successful plays being given a touring grant to take it round
the country. It does not seem to happen. There is not a speedy
enough recognition of quality at the emerging end and not a speedy
enough recognition of problems at the revenue-funded end. It is
very important to have access to new funding and it is helpful
particularly to smaller companies.
Q190 Alan Keen: What are
the glaring gaps? What are we losing through not funding new organisations
and new initiatives?
Ms Jones: I think
the biggest problem is in making performing arts in particular
available to the widest possible audience and widest possible
participation. There is always a danger in theatre of being perceived
as being elitist and there is always a danger through that perception
ending up being elitist. Debra was talking about inreach rather
than outreach. We have heard the word outreach used a lot this
morning and it has gradually been winding us up because it is
not just about mainstream doing all the work and then a little
bit thrown out as outreach to the community. The community is
the big bit actually. All those children in schools are our audiences
of now and of the future and we have to develop an appreciation
and an understanding and an involvement with the performing arts
at a really early age and to sustain that throughout. I think
it was Nick Hytner talking about young adults as well. There is
a gap there between what happens when you have seen a bit of theatre
in schools and then in getting it accessible as you get older.
I think those are where the glaring gaps are. If you do not see
theatre as a viable career because there is no way into it you
are unlikely to choose it so you are not going to take much interest
in it as a young person, and you are likely to think the telly
is more fun. There is a real danger of that. You have got to be
engaging with people throughout their lives and you have got to
be making it accessible to people throughout their lives which
means making it possible for people to come to the theatre at
a reasonable price, possible to be involved with it both through
participation and seeing it in their schools and there being a
link between what goes on in your school and what goes on in so-called
mainstream theatre. That was a really interesting point about
how you fuse them. Gavin was saying just before we came in, at
the moment we feel that the two worlds are totally separate and
that seems incongruous.
Q191 Alan Keen: That is
what the amateur people were saying last week that professional
theatre treated them with a certain amount of distain (that is
probably the best word to use). I gave the example of the London
Borough of Hounslow where I took the initiative to form a sports
forum to get the best out of the facilities and find the gaps
in provision in the borough because we have lots of sports facilities.
I asked the question should we not have an arts forum. A gentleman
from Wales said the Welsh Assembly has now made it mandatory for
local authorities to have an arts forum in each area in order
to make these links because we cannot have that gap between professional
theatre and amateur theatre and schools. The link from schools
to amateur dramatics is one that surely should be encouraged—and
I am not talking about progression through for individuals to
become Hollywood stars I am talking about the links really in
the communities—people do not understand the joy that they
can get from taking part as well as just being the audience. What
changes should we make to try and get a smoother flow?
Mr Stride: Again
I think that is happening. Community theatre is an old fashioned
word but it is thriving in this country. There is a hot bed of
new writing. There is a willingness to work with the amateur sector
to find new spaces and find new places and times to work. Freed
from the restraints of a building with all its problems, there
is some extraordinary work happening. I can think of Pentabus
who have been presenting for the last two years a large open scale
theatre piece with 70 amateurs in Shrewsbury playing to full houses.
Eastern Angles is working in market towns finding different times
of the day to perform and attracting, by our own research, on
average 30% non-attenders to the arts. I think much of the debate
is about whether buildings are the best way of attracting and
developing new audiences, and that is contained in many of the
submissions this morning. To an extent are we trying to adapt
spaces that are not suited to the needs of the 21st century and
should we be looking at other ways of reaching audiences and expanding
that body of work?
Q192 Alan Keen: Is it
true that people in the community are not really represented to
the level where the Arts Council make the decisions? What representation
is there?
Ms Jones: In the
Arts Council?
Q193 Alan Keen: No, not
as individuals going and sitting on the Arts Council but are they
being listened to by the people at the top who have the purse
strings?
Mr Stride: They
are listened to by me. Whether that has an influence in terms
of me championing new art being made in the South East, yes, I
would say we absolutely are aware of the opportunities that working
with the voluntary sector offers.
Ms Jones: I suppose
an organisation like ITC is designed to represent that sector
and we have been enjoying a greater level of recognition and prominence
which has been really helpful and our sector is definitely thriving.
What I am always slightly nervous of is the creation of more second
tier bodies. I think it is often a response and it has been in
the last few years that the Arts Council say, "Nothing has
been done about circus arts; let's set up a circus arts forum."
It is another massive use of public money that does not really
go anywhere. It is quite divisive and difficult for a sector to
have fora and second tier organisations set up. My mantra is really:
keep it simple and keep it direct. Make sure funding goes directly
to the arts as often as possible because that way you will get
good value for money.
Q194 Michael Fabricant:
In answer to earlier questions, Charlotte Jones, you said revenue
clients are difficult to shift and that certainly resonated with
me. As part of this inquiry our Committee are going to visit the
Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the Birmingham Rep but we are also
going to the Glasshouse Theatre in Stourbridge and also the Lichfield
Garrick and certainly I know that at the Lichfield Garrick they
feel that the Arts Council West Midlands provides regular revenue
funding to a few large theatres at the expense of smaller and
imaginative theatres like the Lichfield Garrick. You talked about
a funding ladder that could operate but you did not elaborate
and I am just wondering given that the Arts Council have limited
resources how is that funding ladder going to operate without
maybe destroying the bigger clients like the Birmingham Rep?
Ms Jones: One of
the things that was promised out of the theatre review (and was
I think a good promise) that perhaps has not happened as much
as it could or should have done is the encouragement to collaboration.
One quite successful piece of collaboration that happened with
the Birmingham Rep was with Pentabus Theatre Company which is
a rural touring company. I think part of how we spread things
out a bit more is making sure that the right companies and organisations
are doing the work. Somebody was talking about foyer activities
in the South Bank and so on. There are nearly always small scale
organisations who are experts in their field. Things have been
going on. In the South Bank recently there was an installation
by Theatre Rights, which is a full-scale young people's theatre
company. Obviously they have benefited from both the profile and
also the fees that put them into the Festival Hall but also the
larger venue will have benefited from the expertise of that organisation.
I think that part of it is actually making that all link up much
better. Rather than inventing an outreach programme to tick the
boxes of the funding body, it is encouraging them to work with
the people and the larger organisations who already do it well.
Do not reinvent the wheel. Encourage those because those companies
will then be more sustainable through working with the larger
organisations. That is one element of it. I think another is just
about the Arts Council being more alert and more responsive. There
has got to be more movement in that funding portfolio. It takes
an extremely long time for a badly-managed organisation to be
a) recognised and then b) challenged and usually a lot of money
is put in to try and sustain them. Whilst I am not completely
against that because I think an organisation should be able to
take risks and make mistakes occasionally those mistakes should
not be compounded constantly over and over again. Something else
that happened in the theatre review is that at the beginning of
it all there was a promise that they were going to be quite ambitious
and new thinking and I thought "they really are". However,
I do not think they were in the end and I think nearly all the
building based companies that wanted to be funded out of the theatre
review were, bar about two. There was poor old Croydon Warehouse
which was the only rep that did not get funding out of the theatre
review and ended up feeling like the arts leper. Worcester was
the other. The two of them ended up feeling they had been completely
rubbished and there was no recognition. If it had been part of
a much wider and perhaps more critical review there would probably
have been more casualties but there would also have been more
of a sense this is something new, we are looking at theatre in
a new way and we are looking at different ways of delivering it.
Q195 Michael Fabricant:
You have named theatres that did not get Arts Council grants.
Are you prepared to name some theatres that do get Arts Council
grants but in your view do not merit them?
Ms Jones: That
is more than my job is worth! It is a very difficult one actually.
This is where I think we are—
Mr Stride: I could
answer you in a slightly more political way I guess because I
took over an organisation in Farnham where many of my predecessors
had spent all their energy trying to work out how to run it as
a theatre space and how to get people into the building. I took
the view that that was not the way of solving the problem. The
problem seemed to be how do we encourage people to come to theatre
so what we did was invite four or five companies to come into
the building and make work and then tour it out across the region
so we are now performing in village halls and community centres
and on allotment sites along the sea coast, making new work and,
guess what, all sorts of people are turning out to see the work.
So I think there are examples of organisations where the building
has become the purpose rather than the making of the art or attracting
of the audience.
Q196 Michael Fabricant:
That is right but we have been talking about theatres and the
difficulty—and I think this is a real difficulty—of
theatres in the West End is that they are old buildings and built
in a generation when outreach, or inreach, was not a popular vogue,
but then there are some very good theatres—and again I will
mention the Lichfield Garrick—which have won some architectural
awards with theatres being built where inreach is possible but
unlike the Lichfield Garrick, I hasten to add, the management
is not very good. Then from time to time you get that marvelous
nexus where you have got good management and a good, pleasant
theatre environment. Do you think the Arts Council reacts rapidly
enough to recognise that?
Ms Jones: No, not
always. There is a lot of sensitivity around challenging bad management
in theatres. It seems to take quite a long time to deal with the
worst offenders if you like. There always is a danger that the
bigger the organisation the less likely the Arts Council is to
want to do anything about it. We always say about our sector there
is never a corpse to bury so it is much, much easier to take out
small organisations with no buildings. Your colleague Alan was
talking about the Waterman's Arts Centre in Hounslow. There was
a fantastic young people's theatre company which existed in Hounslow
called Salamander which folded a couple of years ago just because
the local authority withdraws its funding. That is an enormous
loss to that borough. Here were thousands of children participating
from there on a weekly basis.
Q197 Michael Fabricant:
Again may I challenge you because although what you say resonates
with me and in some ways is music to my ears I have got to take
the fair view as well that producers and operators of theatres
like to have some consistency of knowledge that there is going
to be forward funding. Surely what you are suggesting is going
to introduce a volatility which would make the ability to predict
budgets one, two or three years hence an impossibility? How
can theatres like the Birmingham Rep operate under those conditions?
Ms Jones: As I
said before, sensible revenue funding is important and there is
no doubt about that. It is also important that there is a broad
theatre ecology with a range of different spaces and companies
available to the public. So I am not really advocating a clean
sweep of all revenue clients at all. I think it is much more about
being strategic and careful and critical about what is working
and what is not.
Q198 Michael Fabricant:
How do we change the structure of the Arts Council to achieve
that?
Mr Stride: One
initiative they have taken on, as I said earlier, was to start
looking at funding producers who then fund ideas rather than companies
so that there is a level of certainty within the commitment to
spend money on productions but who might make those productions
and to the best ideas or at the best time to fit its audience,
so there is a sincere attempt within the Arts Council to try and
resolve some of those questions.
Q199 Michael Fabricant:
Can I just ask one more question. I notice in your submission
to us you said that when eventually maybe something is funded
one way or another and a new production is launched in the provinces
when it comes down or if it comes down to the West End actually
the originating theatre, the originating producers, the originating
artists do not really benefit from it; why is that?
Ms Jones: It is
to do with what I said in my submission about there not being
a level playing field for negotiation. You have seen what West
End theatre comprises—very wealthy millionaires, and they
have a very strong position and it is very difficult for companies
individually to come into the West End because there are lots
and lots of restrictive practices existing around who they can
work with, around how they market the site, so it is very, very
expensive, it is a massive leap up. What tends to happen is you
get a commercial producer taking on the show and they do not want
the original people involved. They do not want the original director
or the original company. The writer will be acknowledged but the
rest of what made that work will not, and what made that work
was public subsidy. That work was created through public money
and I think that there is a problem there in that there is not
enough pressure at the moment to acknowledge the people that created
it and the public money that went into it.
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