Arts Campaign: Letters

I AGREE with every word ... for a host of reasons, I think the idea of campaigning to make it easier for individuals to give from their own pocket is a good one.

Bernard Samuels

Director, Plymouth Arts Centre, 1971-1996

I DON'T always read your newspaper, but I am always drawn back - and this campaign is just such a reason.

Fiona Gledhill

London SW19

I WAS delighted to see you launch the campaign. The Blair administration, in its quest for a second term, is in danger of becoming vulgar rather than popular.

Kim Brewer ARCM

pianist, Bideford, Devon

ONCE a theatre is gone, no matter how large or small, it is another brick removed from the foundations of our culture.

Susannah York

speaking against the possible closure of the Waterside Theatre, Stratford- on-Avon

AS A family we've always felt very passionately about the arts. A society which doesn't support the arts dies - the spiritual health of the nation is what's at stake.

Catherine Watson

London

AFTER working for 14 years in the US, I am well aware of the advantages of a fiscal system which offers tax relief as an incentive to charitable contributions. In encouraging the minister to press for similar concessions in this country, I hope we can also remind him of the anomaly over the recovery of VAT, which encourages museums to charge for admission. In spite of Treasury opposition, he must not give up on a just cause, and those of us who support it.

Duncan Robinson

Director, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

WHILE we should all support the urgency of your pleas to Gordon Brown for arts donations to be tax-exempt in his next Budget, there is probably much also to be learned from our European partners in making the arts a public and political issue.

Ian Flintoff

Director, Acting Positive

BRITAIN has the best theatre in the world. And it is the smaller, out- of-town theatres that give ordinary people an affordable chance to see it. Your campaign highlights an affordable way to save them. I wish it every success.

Leonard Wooding

Gravesend

WE hoped, faintly, that this Philistine government would take at least some notice - but vain hope.

Christina and Eric Arni

London SE20