Earlier this week, culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, did the impossible. After months of silence, and weeks of protest, he presented the country with a £1.57 billion arts fund to be divided across the country.
While the sum has been praised across the sector, Ivan Hewett, the classical music critic for The Telegraph, has issued a warning in his latest piece.
For Hewett, there is one critical consideration that must be made. “One of the trickiest issues that the government department is going to have to navigate is the difference between those organisations that most “deserve” its cash and those that most “need” it,” he notes.
He continues that the bailout may in fact punish those who have coped best with the pandemic. According to Hewett, the allocation of the fund: “penalises thrifty and well-managed organisations that have been able to weather the storm comparatively well – or at least less badly.”
Citing the example of the management of Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, who have said they have sufficient reserves to sit out the pandemic until early 2021, Hewett reasons that the best managed will gain the least of all through the bailout.
Hewett continues that the DCMS will have to make “tough and unpopular decisions” when deciding how best to allocate funding, and that they must “resist the temptation to write the biggest cheques to those who shout the loudest.”
He concludes praising the government’s bailout, but warning that the government “must now show that it remembers the people’s needs and rights, as well as the arts’, when it comes to deciding who gets what.”
