The Thespian Backlash Begins!

‘Indy’ story of the wholesale destruction:

Cultural institutions across the country have been "wiped off the map" by Arts Council England's funding cuts, announced yesterday.

Oh, my! It’s a massacre!

"The news goes beyond shocking and touches on the realms of the disgusting," said Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, discussing the Poetry Book Society's cuts. "This fatal cut is a national shame and a scandal and I urge everyone who cares about poetry to join the PBS as a matter of urgency."

Everyone who cares about poetry? Both of ‘em?

Topher Campbell (theatre director) on the ‘minorities hardest hit!’ aspect:

There is no doubt that given the coalition government's brutal cuts to the arts, the big cultural engines such as the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Court and the RSC will survive, albeit with reduced income.

The real damage of the cuts will be inflicted on smaller companies and individuals and those on the fringes with fragile balance sheets. This is where a lot of the companies created and run by black and minority ethnic (BME) artists and producers work.

Art that can't survive without government money isn't art at all, is it?

To me, diversity is like the high street. If we leave it to mainstream institutions to create work by BME people we will be left with a kind of chainstore arts world where everything looks and feels the same. However, if we support the funding of small companies that are BME-led we will also have the curiosity shops (the independent jewellers and furniture-makers if you like) that will make work that nobody else could.

With one significant difference, Topher. Those small independent shops aren't coming to the government with a begging bowl - they are selling things that people want to buy. Your 'small BME productiion teams' might consider doing the same...

David Edgar (playwright and president of the Writers' Guild) on the need to fight back against this ‘cultural apartheid’:

The arts need to prepare for the fightback now. The cuts have been so long heralded that they have taken on a patina of inevitability. In fact much can change, even during this parliament. Many councils will change colour, returning power to the party which imaginatively transformed declining post-industrial cities through cultural development in the last hard times.

I think he believes that 'Billy Elliot' and 'The Full Monty' were documentaries...

Meanwhile any potential post-2015 government will need to be pressed to see this retrenchment as reversible.

There's a warning for you, folks. Vote Labour, and the arts world will be rifling through your pockets again.