The perceived bias towards London when it comes to UK arts funding looks set to be shaken up, courtesy of a new announcement from Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries.
Dorries has revealed what she calls “the biggest shake-up in arts funding for a generation”, with a particular onus on shifting the emphasis away from the English capital. Instead, she’s announced an investment that specifically targets “places such as Wolverhampton, Hartlepool, Rotherham, Peterborough and Oldham”.
Looking at the numbers and the way they’re presented, there appears to be a light degree of spin here, even if it’s hard to grumble with the underlying intent of spreading funding around. But in terms of actual extra money, it’s hard to find too much evidence of it.
It does get close. The line in the government document – that you can read in full here – is “Cultural investment by the government via Arts Council England (ACE) is expected to rise to almost £250 million by 2025 across England outside London. This is the equivalent to a 19 per cent increase by 2025, the final year of the Spending Review period”. To our eyes, that’s not a 19% increase in total funding, but a 19% increase in the sum that makes it outside of London.
How that affects the London pot of money isn’t mentioned, so it’s not entirely clear whether there’s a degree of robbing Peter to pay Paul here. But digging around? It seems a bit that way. This report suggests that the Arts Council of England – which is administering the fundings – has to take £24m out of London spending and redeploy it elsewhere, so presumably that’s at the heart of the investment.
Even that said, the sums involved are, proportionately, a very tiny drop in a very big ocean. Dorries has committed a £75m increase in arts spending over the next three years, which sounds like a lot but when spread around the UK, but in practical terms perhaps isn’t.
