Exclusive: Arts council cuts have decimated axed companies

Published Wednesday 28 March 2012 at 23:13 by The Stage news team

More than one in ten companies that are losing 100% of their core funding from Arts Council England this week are closing as a result, The Stage can exclusively reveal.

This is the key finding of a survey conducted by The Stage one year on from the arts council’s national portfolio review. We contacted the 206 cultural organisations who were told they would lose all their regular funding last March.

A further 22% of respondents described themselves as “at risk of closing”. Only 16% rated their financial situation as healthy. The 206 organisations will lose a combined total of £19.1 million per year when their core funding is cut at the end of this week. Almost half of respondents (46%) said their organisations were “just surviving”.

The 24 organisations that The Stage understands to have closed or which will close imminently include dance companies the Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs, Durham City Arts, Foursight Theatre Company, Audiences Central, Theatre Writing Partnership, Jazz Action and Flambard Press.

Brian Attwood, editor of The Stage, said: “The bleakness of these statistics is all the worse when one bears in mind that these closures were a pre-emptive response to losing ACE funding, they do not follow it.

“We must prepare for the possibility that, over the next year, these early closers will be joined by others whose determination to continue has proved to be in excess of the resources at their disposal or whose revised business plans will offer no defence against their altered circumstances.”

In their responses to the survey, many companies said they had been forced to make staff redundant. Others have had to move out of their premises or change their business model to save money. Several respondents said that losing arts council funding affected their ability to generate funds from other sources, as ACE support is perceived to be a benchmark of a well-run organisation.

Some companies said they were still unsure why they had lost their funding.

Read the full article here at The Stage website;

http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/35700/exclusive-arts-council-cuts-have-decimated