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Orchestras among those to lose arts funding

By | Published on Thursday 31 March 2011

Arts Council England

A number of orchestras are among the arts organisations facing an uncertain future following an announcement yesterday about which companies the Arts Council will continue to fund, and at what level. The body, which distributes taxpayer funding to arts groups in England, has had to cut the number of organisations it supports after the government cut the money it hands over to the Council by 30% last year.

While arts groups and political types generally held back from criticising the choices the Arts Council had made in deciding which organisations should get funding, recognising that the arts body was in an incredibly difficult position given the overall budget cuts, various groups used the announcement to again criticise the government for cutting arts spend, warning about the impact it might have on Britain’s cultural future.

Music Week quoted Labour’s culture spokesman Ivan Lewis, who said more than 500 organisations would suffer as a result of the cuts, and that “some will go to the wall, many will have to increase ticket prices, at a time when people’s incomes are being squeezed. I fear a return to the 80s and 90s when the arts were for the few, not the many”.

Speaking for those music organisations affected, the Musician’s Union’s John Smith told CMU: “The Musicians’ Union appreciates that the Arts Council had some very difficult decisions to make. The news was never going to be good with the Council having received a 30% cut from the Government. Together with some of the disastrous local authority cuts to arts organisations, however, today’s announcements will signal the start of the end for many organisations. It will be a while before the full impact of today’s cuts becomes apparent, but we hope that as many music organisations as possible will be able to survive the tough times ahead”.



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