Arts Council England (ACE) doled out the dosh on Tuesday. There’s plenty of it – about £400 million each year. Poor folk, who should know better, chip in £71 million by fecklessly buying lottery tickets.
It beats me why anybody would choose to spend £1 (?) on a lottery ticket knowing that most of that money goes in tax and “good causes” and only a trifle to prize winners whose lives will be irreversibly changed for the worse. But there you are. They are subsidising a host of big and small theatres, museums, arts centres, opera and ballet companies and so on across England. Places that I bet they never visit.
ACE especially like equality and diversity; think gay zebras. They are trying to get less London-centric but still the capital hoovers up 40%. English National Opera are back on the payroll with a £49 million grant, remember they were put on the naughty step, see No, No, No – ENO. Welsh National Opera gets £24 million, and the population is only three million, Glyndebourne gets £6 million but I think this is to make their touring company work. British Youth Opera gets a slug but it’s worth reflecting on those organisations that aren’t on the list. Opera Holland Park, Garsington, Grange Park and the Grange Festival seem able to support themselves. This is the right business model. To have to tick all the boxes, jump through all the hoops and sit up on your hind legs to beg is not attractive.
Then there are those who applied and were turned down. Fulham Opera, of which I am a trustee, asked for £200,000, spread over four years. In a way I am sorry but London is crowded with small opera companies and FO needs to work on a business model where we are not dependent on the tax payer. Easier said than done. There are charities that have supported us and we will turn to them and others and cut our cloth according to our means.