The Role of Arts Council England…

The Arts Council of England (ACE) included 990 venues in its National Portfolio Organisations (NPO) for the period from 2023 - 2026, sharing £446million each year. This funding has now been extended until March 2028 for those NPO’S who submit a draft budget for the period. Just nine organisations received over £4m a year under the NPO’s system totalling £93.7m, 21% of the total. This means the average grant to the other 981 organisations was £360,000 per annum.

Incidentally and shockingly, the Premier League and Championship spent £472 million on AGENTS fees alone in the year to February 2025. To put that in perspective, around 27million attend football matches in Premier League and Championship in 2024/25 (many of course seeing every home game) compared to SOLT’s estimate of 37 million who attended a theatre (17million of those in London) with few going more than a handful of times a year. So LIVE theatre reaches many more than LIVE football does, yet the funding is disproportionately skewed by the funds from those who watch football on TV. While football spends obsenely large sums on player wages and transfers, theatre struggles to get sufficient funds to operate sustainably and efficiently.

The Role Of ACE Funding

Does the ACE funding drive innovation and creativity, does it increase diversity and accessibility, or does it undermine resilience in organisations planning, a lack of commerciality and an overreliance on the grants? There is no doubt that some of the grand buildings these organisations occupy costs a lot to run and their productions (especially the big grant recipients) are some of the most grandiose and expensive looking of the sector, with huge orchestras and technical teams but is that the same as being culturally excellent? A clear set of measures of success of the funding is required which addresses how many new audiences’ members attend, the under 25’s attracted, frequency of visits, and the ratio of ACE grant to self-generated funds in these organisations.

How does the sector widen its appeal from its core audience to attract younger and more diverse audiences? How much should ACE underwrite the overhead of the building and permanent staff and how much should it subsidise access to new and creative work?

The cultural sector needs funding support to encourage risk taking, diversity and access but it also needs to develop financial resilience, professional management and requires help to get the balance right between risk taking and commercial programming to create sustainable organisations. ACE has a vital role to play in the Arts Sector, but we need to see how it measures the impact of what it spends against what it expects the investment to deliver.

A top-down strategy for ACE:

We believe the priorities for 2028/29 and beyond should be:

1) Build a robust network of producing and receiving venues around England and Wales that produce high quality work to attract good audiences

2) Create Cultural Hubs at these venues and smaller community-based venues that provide live theatre experiences for the next generation of theatregoers, showing them the value from taking part or watching a production and putting down your phone for a few hours.

3) Invest in the Capital infrastructures of venue to make them greener and more sustainable and fit for 21st Century audiences.

Three levels of Support:

We believe that there should be three levels of funding for those that are part of this strategy.

1) Nationally Important Organisations: Across the country, there are a handful of organisations that are true drivers of interest in culture that, if run properly with clear goals, should be sustained and supported to deliver excellence. These are likely to include English National Ballet, National Theatre, Opera North, Royal Opera House, RSC, and Welsh National Opera. These should be funded on a long-term basis, subject to performance checks and expected to deliver beyond their core venues through transfers, tours, and digital streaming. Any underperformance should result in the first place in leadership or board changes, not in funding cuts. Annual funding should be increased by inflation (subject to an annual cap) but in return for that planning certainty any profits from transfers, tours or digital streaming should be subject to an ACE royalty which is offset against the annual funding. This group might include Bristol Old Vic, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Manchester Exchange Theatre, and Newcastle Theatre Royal to ensure a strong regional representation. We think no more than 20% of available ACE funds should be directed to these organisations.

2) Regionally Important Organisations: These organisations will create a regional network that brings live culture to the majority of the population throughout the year. The aim should be to support to some degree venues within 30 minutes’ travel time of 95% of the population. Given the 2014 data that 180 of the 414 venues were in London, the focus should be on which of the less than 250 other venues are required to achieve this proximity to the population to cultural infrastructure, where are the gaps and how does ACE funding support a regional network of collaborating venues. Significant regional touring producers should be included in the group. We think as a planning assumption, around 65% of the ACE available funds should be directed to these organisations. These should be encouraged (perhaps incentivised) to collaborate with perhaps shared back offices, coordinated regional tours, and combined marketing initiatives.

3) Locally Significant Activity: The remaining ACE funding (say up to 15%) should be used to support other key activity to fill gaps in 2 above such as:

• Local artistes, creatives, and writers’ development

• Smaller venues that fill gaps in the cultural landscape by their location or nature of their work

• Collaboration projects between schools and HE’s and Cultural organisations.

• Small scale regional tours to village halls and similar community venues.

This work might be delegated down to regional awarding bodies, but the same measures would apply: Reach, Frequency, Diversity, Economic Growth and Social Impact. Every effort should be made to connect this work with the other two sectors through mentoring, collaboration, set and props loans and cross promotion.

An ideal venue for a Regionally Important Organisation

We have tried to define an ideal regional venue which should have a multi arts capability and ACE should certainly support this in capital investment in such places. An ideal scenario would be a venue in a catchment of 100,000 - 250,000 population within a 40-minute drive time, with a 550 - 750 seater main house and a 100 - 200 seater studio, both equipped to show films especially event cinema. In addition, it should have social/rehearsal spaces that can be hired out for classes, meetings, and workshops to engage local organisations. To support all day use, a café/kitchen serving light snack lunches or simple pre-theatre fare, or servicing private room hires, will increase utilisation. These are generally run by local councils or independent trusts and play a vital role in the UK theatre infrastructure; a few are operated by the larger commercial operators like Ambassador Theatre Group or Trafalgar Entertainment. Good governance is key and the owner/operator model is not so critical as the objectives they seek to deliver in their catchment area.

Developing Reach for the Network

The ONS 2021 Census data listed 175 cities and towns in England with a population of over 100,000 people headed, of course, by London with around 9 million people. These 175 areas’ total population is around 40 million people, around two thirds of the total population of 56 million. In a previous organisation, we commissioned an optimisation analysis to map existing facilities against population density as a guide to future facilities investment. The aim was to ensure that the investment was placed to support and develop a network of facilities that could be promoted to local populations within a thirty-minute drive time so at least 90% of the population was able to access the sport. The same principle should be developed here in creating a National Theatre Strategy, which embraces a National Youth Strategy and seeks to ensure that the vast majority of the population have access for their families to these cultural hubs within a reasonable travel time. This should inform the next round of ACE Funding under its National Portfolio Organisation allocations.

Selecting Venues to support in Regional Network

It is not enough to select on creative ambition and diverse ideas or those that can write the best applications, although they are clearly part of the process. We need to develop a network that collaborates with each other, understands its audiences, programmes a balanced mix of commercial and innovative productions, and operates on a financially and green sustainable basis under the stewardship of a strong governing board. The core of this network should be invited by ACE to join in order to establish the coverage and reach in the Population and then fill in around these main hubs with suitable applications.

We tried to identify current venues that would fit this strategy and identified 59 specific venues which, together with the London West End venues (as the sixtieth), would create a strong cultural network in our view. The sixty would offer around 100,000 seats (assuming 40,000 in the West End) to a population in the ONS Census data for the locations of around 20 million (9 million in London) representing roughly 0.5% population reach venue capacity on each day. You can see the venues we identified here .

Stage Whispers 45- Developing a Regionally Important Organisations Network

These 60 locations certainly serve over a third of the English population of 56 million within a very reasonable travel time and a whole lot more for a travel time up to forty minutes from outside that ONS location boundaries. A detailed survey analysis would define this better. Our analysis is not definitive but sets out the shape and make up of this top-down approach to building a network of Regionally Important Organisations. We note that not all meet our 550 - 750 seater main house and a 100 - 200 seater studio size criteria set out above, but we consider that those smaller venues should be included because of their track record in production and outreach and location to support the National coverage.

We believe that ACE should encourage these Regionally Important Organisations to:

• Co-produce touring productions

• Share set develop and recycling

• Share audience data and understanding

• Deliver good outreach programmes including Summer Youth Projects

• Adopt the Youth Advisory Board approach of Chichester and others to connect better with young people

• Focus on philanthropy and fund raising to support subsidy of affordable accessible tickets for young audiences

• Develop new writing competitions especially for those venues with studios for readings, workshops, and full staging of winners

ACE response to the Baroness Hodge Review

We see the first signs of how ACE are approaching this challenge as they move away from the 10-year plan ‘Lets Create’ a few years early. How they use and grow the funds available is critical to the regional theatre sector and they need to focus on creating collaboration between organisations and building robust financially sustainable organisations at the heart of a network of creative producers. Commerciality is not a negative; the Arts Council needs to encourage commerciality in titles and casting to attract a larger core audience on profitable basis so that venues and producers can cross subsidise new works, experimental ideas and strong outreach to communities and younger audiences to underpin the future of the sector. It is a key balance to get right, driven by good governance, strong financial skills and powerful alliances of like-minded organisations that create a safe environment for the development and creativity to thrive.

The new ACE strategy

Arts Council England (ACE) recently published a new strategic framework, replacing its previous strategy, ‘Let’s Create’ as a response to the Baroness Hodge review. The interim framework sets three core objectives:

• Support excellence

• Deliver for everybody

• Reach everywhere

These are broad objectives and unarguable, but the key is about how they are delivered, how they are funded and the compromises and choices that are made in allocating funding to support them. Indeed, a strategy that seeks to deliver to everybody and everywhere is unfundable and choices and priorities will have to be made.

The new framework places a stronger emphasis on funding decisions based on the quality and art form expertise; while also establishing a new touring service to support performance sectors but here too, there will be choices and decisions need to be based on track record and creating sustainable organisations, and not simply supporting one off creative idea. We need to separate the core funding that drives the strategy from a smaller allocation for start-up and wilder ideas that may or not develop or work.

ACE talks of streamlining previous bureaucratic criteria and processes but we must also see the capture efficiency of the return on investment for these public funds, and this cannot be measured in just artistic terms or Awards. We need to see how the main funded organisations deliver on reach, frequency, diversity, economic growth, and social impact.

They say they will base their assessment of applications on the following criteria:

• Artistic quality and development of the arts

• Engagement

• Organisational capacity

• The extent to which the organisation is critical to the arts infrastructure

• Equality, diversity, and inclusion

We would say that the three core elements must be those in bold with clear metrics while the other two are aspirational subjective judgements. They say that these three are to be weighted in the assessment to 65% of the score, we say it should be up to 75%.

We agree that, in addition, applications for core strategic funding should include how they will meet monitoring requirements according to Arts Council strategic priorities on:

• Artist and artform development

• Audiences

• Public engagement

• Operating mode.

Measurements of Success

We would like to see how the ACE NPO strategy supports these three measurable objectives:

1) Cultural events involving kids in education at their school, on school visits to theatres, or out of school activity at venues. These are essential. Pantomime plays a significant role, but we need strategies that build on this experience and embed the cultural experience in the curriculum and child’s development. Every child should have several cultural experiences every year at school. These develop life skills, widen cultural awareness, and grow a sense of community away from the dreaded phone screens. This is a priority for funding, but we need a clear strategy across government departments to deliver it.

2) Frequency of engagement in a venue. We can’t allow the economics of theatre to price people out of going and yet that is exactly what is happening with the increased cost pressures on venues from this government and the squeeze of the public’s discretionary spend through taxation and inflation. There is a danger that this squeeze will become a downward spiral with fewer producers taking less risks, smaller audiences being attracted and less financially sustainable organisations. We have to fund to ensure that the community connects more frequently with the cultural organisation and sees the venue as more that a special occasion treat. The funding needs to create events to draw people in at prices that are seen as fair and reasonable.

3) Entertain. Inform. Educate. This old Reithian BBC mantra is still relevant to programming venues. Successful venues will programme each year to Entertain with strong commercial programming that drives audience interest. The income generates surpluses that can be reinvested into new works which set out to Inform audiences about diverse cultures and outlooks on life building stronger integrated communities. Events can be staged that draw people into the venue to Educate them about issues, opportunities, and the world. Venues can’t be sustainable if they focus on just in one of these, but it takes care to programme the right balance which can grow reach in the community, drive frequency of engagement and build integration in society. What is more if this is done well it drives economic growth in the area. Measures should target Reach, Frequency, Diversity, Economic Growth and Social Impact.

Other ACE reforms

The new touring service will need to help the touring sector innovate, take financial risks, and strengthen audience offerings. This will be a radical rethink. In particular, the smaller venues with 400 - 600 seats need to attract better product to develop audiences and producers will be reluctant to book their shows in to these without guarantees covering most of the weekly running costs.

Restructuring how ACE works is equally important so that it a supportive advisor and partner and not a demanding and bureaucratic funder so that individuals and organisations can have access to a new national funding program for skills development and training.

The announcement is a good start but there is more to do as they development the detail and process. There are several models out there that appear to be working well even without Arts Council funding, so the challenge is how to replicate that with Arts Council support. They should aim to support more long-term viable organisations, not be a supporter of lame duck organisations that are not governed and managed properly and act as heavily dependent on the Arts Council grants.

You can read a longer version of these thoughts on these links.

Stage Whispers 8- Regional Theatre role models

Stage Whispers 26- The Baroness Hodge ACE review

Stage Whispers 45- Developing a Regionally Important Organisations Network

Stage Whispers 47 - Arts Council new strategy for Regional Theatre.

Nick Wayne

Nick has been involved as a Trustee/Director in UK Producer and Venue Organisations for twenty-six years, seen over 1350 productions, visited over 160 of the UK Venues, seen overseas productions in USA, Canada, France, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, and Australia and invested in over 40 West End Productions. You can read his long form articles on Stage Whispers UK - Nick Wayne