Less arty and more in tune, please: The arts are in crisis, not just through lack of funding but for want of a national strategy, argues David Lister

THE GOVERNMENT yesterday set the seal on a traumatic fortnight for the arts. The Secretary of State for National Heritage, Peter Brooke, told Parliament that he was ordering a cut in the Arts Council's staff and members, and a review of its work, to make it more accountable.

The Council might find it hard to rally friends to protest. It, too, has been doing its fair share of cutting. Two London symphony orchestras will stop receiving public funding. Up to 10 theatres will also lose their subsidy. The theatres have not yet been officially named but are widely believed to include the country's oldest operating theatre, the Bristol Old Vic, and big regional venues in Plymouth, Coventry and Watford.

These cuts have been the biggest shock to the arts for years. And when in shock the arts world moves into Pavlovian mode and lashes out at the philistine nature of the Government. A private meeting of leading theatre directors last week did just that, formulating a policy to protect the Arts Council from cuts and organising a petition to the Prime Minister John Major from a host of arts celebrities.

Natural their reaction may be. On this occasion, however, it is fundamentally wrong. For, as the Arts Council's secretary general, Anthony Everitt, has said, even if the Government were to rescind its pounds 5m cut in grant tomorrow, the two orchestras and at least six theatres would still be on the hit list.

What has happened is that the Arts Council's chairman, Lord Palumbo, and secretary general backed by the members of the great and the good who are appointed to the Council, has shown French-style dirigisme in making artistic choices and ended the tension that has existed since John Maynard Keynes set up the Arts Council at the end of the Second World War. This is the tension between spreading the money thinly to as many clients as possible, and funding fewer bodies more generously, concentrating on the centres of excellence.

In opting to fund what it considers quality rather than widespread accessibility, it will quite simply change the artistic landscape of Britain. But it should not be automatically condemned for that. The Arts Council is there to make choices. And years of spreading the cake too thinly has led to perpetual crises.

Of course, lobbyists from Vanessa Redgrave MP to Richard Eyre, director of the National Theatre, are already arguing, and with some force, that if the Government was more generous in funding culture there would be no need for such a choice. But the reality is that the Government in the present economic climate will not rethink its policy on arts funding. So the questions that have to be asked are: is Lord Palumbo changing the nation's artistic landscape in the right way and for the right reasons? What are the criteria that determine whether or not a theatre is smiled on by the Arts Council? Is the Council correct to cut drama by pounds 1.4m and transfer much of that money to the visual arts and particularly contemporary dance?

Much of the debate of the past fortnight has focused on the threat to two of London's symphony orchestras, and the Arts Council has certainly addressed the orchestras problem in a cackhanded way. Its request for an Appeal Court judge to head a committee to decide on the orchestras' artistic worth simply passes the buck for a decision the Council and its music advisers should be able to make.

It has to be asked, though, whether keeping four orchestras in London chasing diminishing audiences is wise, when whole areas of the country are without their own symphony orchestra. Moreover the orchestras receive less than 20 per cent of their money from public funding and try to make that up with recording contracts and film work.

It is the theatres we should be worrying about. They receive 40 per cent of their money from the Arts Council, and, unlike the orchestras, have nothing else to fall back on. They either stop originating their own productions and hope to survive as receiving houses for productions that have originated elsewhere, losing en route their traditional role as training centres for young actors; or, more likely, they close. The prospect of Bristol without the Bristol Old Vic is a real one.

Yet the Bristol Old Vic is a focal point in the city, a source of pride as much as the football clubs and cathedral. And here lies the key point that the Arts Council seems to be missing. Theatre, unlike contemporary dance, is not just a matter of what happens on stage. It is also a restaurant, a bar, a place to meet and inevitably, in such surroundings, talk about drama and the arts as well as see them performed. At best, it is also an architectural contribution to a town. Can the Council really contemplate seeing the Theatre Royal, Plymouth, turned into an office block? Take the Old Vic out of Bristol or the Belgrade out of Coventry and you take a piece of the heart out of those communities. Of how many contemporary dance companies can the same be said?

Then what about the work on stage? The Arts Council says the criteria for choosing which theatres to fund are innovation, education and cultural diversity. There must be a stress on new work. But why? Why not fund theatres that provide their local communities with work they enjoy, be it new, old or a mixture? A theatre may believe it is doing well if it gets big houses and a West End transfer. But the Arts Council is not impressed if it is what is termed 'a transfer of a safe Terence Rattigan play'. Again, why not, if that's what people want? Rattigan, ignored by the National Theatre virtually since its inception, is probably as unknown to most young people as the most radical, innovative and culturally diverse new drama.

The Arts Council must carry the public with it in its quest for cultural diversity. It is there to fund the performing arts we wish to see, not to carry out a politically correct mission, playing to empty houses.

It needs to be more in tune with the public. It also needs to rethink its role, detach itself more firmly from the Government, say openly how much money it needs to fund its clients adequately and present a case for the Government giving this sum.

If that campaign fails then it will have to make more painful choices. And it is no good just ignoring that fact. The Arts Council has come under fire for its plan to axe Glyndebourne Touring Opera's pounds 859,000 grant. But could not Glyndebourne's parent company take over this funding from the public purse? Equally, the Council might have to consider the funding of activities such as literature ( pounds 1,332,000), and film, video and broadcasting ( pounds 970,000).

But the loss of 10 regional theatres is of a different order. It is not just painful, it is a blow to artistic life and will result in a subsequent shortage of actors, writers and productions coming through to the big national companies. It is also a blow to community life outside London, too often the focus of cuts.

If we had a proper national arts strategy then it would have been issues such as these that Mr Brooke concerned himself with yesterday, though his determination that the Council be more accountable and explain its decisions is a step forward.

A cut in administration staff is merely a diversion from the real issues: how much money is needed to fund the arts properly; are the criteria for deciding who gets the money correct; and can we ignore both the artistic and social losses of axing some of our most celebrated theatres?

(Photograph omitted)