Arts Council O ( ;KI,;AT BKITAI N Critical Judgments Thirty-sixth annual report and accounts 1980/81 Thirty-sixth Annual Report and Accounts 198 1 ISSN 0066-813 3 Published by the Arts Council of Great Britai n 105 Piccadilly, London W1V OA U Designed by Duncan Firth Printed by Watmoughs Limited, Idle, Bradford ; and Londo n Cover : Reproduction of the Arts Council 's corporate seal, designed by Reynolds Ston e and engraved by George Friend . Cartoons (on pages 6 and 8) by Ban x from the exhibition The Arts Council-what it does . Contents 4 Chairman 's Introductio n 5 Secretary-General's Report 9 Regional Department 10 Drama 15 Music 18 Visual Arts 20 Dance 22 Literature 23 Housing the Arts 24 Trainin g 25 Educatio n 26 Personnel and Administratio n 27 Scotlan d 31 Wales 35 Membership of Council and Staf f 36 Council, Committees and Panel s 41 Annual Accounts , Funds and Exhibition s The objects for which th e Arts Council of Great Britai n is established are : 1 To develop and improve the knowledge , understanding and practice of the arts ; 2 To increase the accessibility of the arts t o the public throughout Great Britain ; and 3 To co-operate with government departments , local authorities and other bodies to achiev e these objects . Chairman's Introductio n Having now completed would, for a variety of reasons, not be renewed . The four years as Chairman decisions were taken in the knowledge that they of the Arts Council I fee l would be unpopular in many quarters and arous e that this is a convenien t sharp controversy . We did not perhaps foresee quit e moment to take stock , the degree of inaccuracy and selectivity which woul d especially since th e colour the reporting of these decisions in many of Council has recently ha d the media . Despite all the criticism l remai n to endure something o f convinced that the policy was broadly right and tha t a buffeting from the media . The first thing to say i s the alternative of spreading the butter still mor e that the subsidised arts are a great deal better of f thinly would have been debilitating for the arts i n today than many feared they would be . Th e general. Council's Grant-in-Aid has by and large survived th e major surgery which has had to be applied to man y The Council cannot avoid making judgments an d areas of government spending, and certainly th e determining priorities, more especially in thes e Council does not face the traumatic halving o f difficult times . Its conclusions will always be open t o resources imposed on its United States counterpart , challenge, and rightly. Criticism is in no wa y the National Endowment for the Arts, by the ne w resented so long as it is based on fact and not fiction, administration in Washington . But our relief an d and lessons have been learned following the event s gratitude must not be allowed to obscure the fac t of December 1980 . It is none the less my earnes t that the arts in Britain remain seriously underfunded . hope that we can soon return to an annual growth i n This is a widely held and not merely a personal view ; real resources, however modest, and so be relieve d Mr Norman St John-Stevas, for example, said i n of the necessity of making too many painful choices . January 1980, 'No government in the last decade ha s given the support to the arts which I personall y believe they should have'. With perhaps one exception in the last seven o r eight years the increase in the Council's grant, barel y compensating for inflation, has left no margin fo r real growth . During this period forward V, .r ,(, commitments, entered into when some growt h QU4VV- W money each year could reasonably be expected , have inexorably matured . The net result up to th e end of 1980 has been an even thinner spread o f subsidy over the Council's clients in general . We hesitated, understandably but perhaps wrongly, t o withdraw grants in order to make room for muc h needed increases in particular sectors where artisti c standards were unquestioned . Last December the nettle was belatedly grasped . Certain clients, notably the regional orchestras an d the touring dance companies, were in rea l difficulties through long periods of underfunding ; in some instances survival was in doubt . The Counci l therefore decided that a number of companies mus t have a significant real increase and that, in order t o make this possible, a rather smaller number of grants Secretary-General's Report Critical Judgments 'The Arts Council has money on the arts . Those who suggest that the ver y been having a roug h modest public expenditure on the arts through th e ride', might well be Arts Council should be terminated and the mone y the opening word s redistributed to taxpayers may not realise that this of this year's report ; would give each taxpayer less than 3 pence extra pe r but they were in fact week to spend . Even if every penny of that wer e written by Raymond spent on the arts, which is highly unlikely, does Williams two years ag o anyone imagine that this would ensure th e It is unhappily true that the Arts Council will alway s continuance of, for example, an unsubsidised Roya l have a rough ride, since the resources available to i t Opera House, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Roya l and the claims made on it never match . This Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra or the Sheffiel d inevitably means that many applications have to be Crucible Theatre? turned down and hard decisions have to be mad e about existing clients . This is not a new situation, the Council criteri a So much for the perennial predicament of the Art s needs of the arts have for years outstripped the fund s t available to the Arts Council, as Mr Norman S t Council in trying to reconcile the claims made on i Jahn-5tevas acknowledged both before and after h e with the funds available . 1 would now like to became Minister for the Arts . consider some of the criteria the Council uses i n resolving this problem . (I speak of'the Council', This fact was however masked during the year b y because crucial decisions are taken by the ful l newspaper stories and headlines which proclaimed a Council and not by officers, as some journalists see m E10 million increase in our grant and 'the highes t to think . ) grant ever' . This misled many people, includin g many of our clients, into believing that better time s In December this year, the Council made the most radical judgments about grant allocations in its 3 5 for the arts had arrived. The fact which the Counci l (and its clients) had to live with, however, was tha t years' existence . These decisions refer to grants fo r although there was a cash increase, inflation and the 1981/82, but since the decisions and the public fact that part of the grant was specifically for capita l debate about them took place in the second half o f projects, meant that the money available to th e the year with which this report deals, it is pertinen t to discuss the background here . Council for revenue funding increased by only 11 A per cent - roughly equal to the general figure, bu t Financial restraint on the Council's own capacity t o well below the figure for inflation in the arts, whic h fund the arts was obviously an important factor. As is higher . (The Council has commissione d the Chairman of the Council wrote in a letter to th e independent research to determine how muc h Minister {published in Hansard), 'Many of ou r higher.) Further the cash grant fell short of what th e decisions were indeed closely related to the level o f Arts Council asked for after pruning the aggregat e grant.' The decisions which the Council took i n requests of its clients by some E6, million . December 1980 have over the years becom e f Taxpayers' money inescapable. However, the cumulative effect o The Council does not criticise the Government fo r several years' underfunding brought the Council to a this. The level of grant applied for is the Arts crunch this year . Prophetically, The Economis t Council's responsibility ; the level of public spendin g predicted this in October 1976, when it said tha t is the Government's business and will be influence d because of increasing financial pressures the Counci l by its general policy and the state of the economy . 'is obliged to make judgments that could be avoided , The Council is simply concerned that the facts abou t or at least mitigated, during the decade in whic h the level of its grant should be understood by client s Britain's investment in the arts grew steadily . By and by the taxpayers who provide the money . making these judgments the Council will in practic e be formulating policy more specifically than in th e A few people feel Britain spends too much public past .' Secretarv-General's Repor r Similarly, Sir Hugh Willatt, my predecessor a s subject reports which follow), it was nevertheless a Secretary-General, noted in a book recentl y year in which the Council had to take some very published, but written long before last December , unpleasant decisions .