Agenda item

Laura Dyer, Executive Director, Arts Council England will attend.

The Board welcomed Laura Dyer (Executive Director, Arts Council England) and Paul Bristow (Arts Council England) to the meeting and it was excellent to have a very positive working partnership between the Board and Arts Council England.

Post-general election and ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review, it was now a good opportunity to take stock of where we are on arts funding, the challenges and opportunities for further collaboration. Our joint lobbying on the arts and growth ahead of the 2013 Spending Review resulted in a better than expected outcome for the arts (5% cut) compared to the DCMS cut of 5%.

The Board were keen to explore the opportunities for the arts that might arise from devolution and consider what this might mean for how the ACE works with councils, support the arts to be bigger players in commissioning conversations and strengthen our narrative on how the arts can help to tackle costly health and social pressures and continue to support councils to share and adopt new delivery models through the joint Cultural Leadership Essentials Programme.

There was a continuing need to promote the culture and arts agenda including work with local authorities had been very positive and an excellent partnership had developed.

Arts and Culture needed to be embedded across all agendas and there was a case to be made that it contributed to increased wellbeing which was linked to the public health agenda. A key issue was how the sector could remain strong and resilient in a period of severe budgetary constraint.

With specific reference to the Leadership Essentials Programme work with the LGA, this had been beneficial and it was important to maximise the benefits of staying in touch with Councillors who were attending the programme, so they were able to develop further.

Arts Council England was keen to work on a joint approach on the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR). The Chair and Chief Executive of ACE had been vociferous in expressing their concerns about the challenge of the cultural base being badly eroded by spending cuts. In addition, ACE was keen to share research with the LGA and in particular data on rural communities.

Councillor Edbrooke had sight of a useful libraries report which she would share with ACE.

ACE would be revisiting their strategic statement document.

Board members made the following points in the discussion that followed:

Councils were fighting for their survival with the severe budgetary pressures and it was inevitable that this would affect the arts as Councils would be forced to spend monies on priority areas such as adult social care.

The partnership working with local authorities and ACE was greatly valued, particularly in relation to the Leadership programme.

We should spend money as wisely as possible and focus on outcomes. Local authorities were more than capable of rising to the challenges ahead in an era of reduced funding.

Many local museums received no help from the Arts Council England (although ACE stated that they did their best to spread funding across the country and national museums were directly grant funded)

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was apparently interested in the Arts and it was noted that cuts in this area were not as severe as other areas.

The community played an important role in helping to promote the arts and as a result of the funding reductions difficult decisions needed to be made. We needed to be honest on what could and could not be achieved within this climate.

How do we ensure that Libraries remained sustainable for the future?

We should consider having a joint Arts and Cultural event with the Children and Young People Board.

Decision

The Board noted the report and welcomed the presentation.

Actions

The Arts Council England’s strategic statement document would be refreshed and reviewed.

The opportunity for a joint Arts and Cultural event with the Children and Young People Board would be explored with them via the Chair in discussion with Cllr Rea.

Councillor Edbrooke would send the libraries recent report to Laura Dyer at ACE.