CUT!

Well, the long wait's over: Arts Council announces at its press conference in Hampstead Theatre its verdict. No great surprises: Bush, Northcott, Bristol & National Student Drama Festival win their reprieves (congratulations to them), while the rest - including Tara - wonder why we bothered engaging in the appeals process in a reasonable manner.

When you're in the death cell, there's no point being reasonable.

How does it feel to be chopped in half (Tara received a 50% cut in its funding, effective from this April)?

Maddening, enervating, depressive, angry... all the epithets and adjectives you can think of. What keeps gnawing at the heart is the sense that you've been found wanting - the work is not good enough to deserve continued funding. But then I have to remind myself this is ONE officer's opinion - its not peer opinion, is not audience opinion, it is not even critics' opinion. It is words scribbled by an apparatchik in a chic office. Who expressed serious concern about our quality and ability to produce middle-scale productions. (This at a time when packed houses around the country are seeing our production of The Tempest) 

What, in the wider context, does this cut to Tara represent? The days of 'cultural diversity' are numbered (a whooping great cheer from the Jeremy Clarkson's of the world, who seem to think the Arts Council is governed by political correctness and so is pouring money to unworthy ethnics. It's a lot worse and simpler than that, Jeremy: the Arts Council of today is simply an obedient lapdog of the government of the day. It's a 'Council': the 'Arts' in the title is merely a fig leaf).

How 'cultural diversity' numbered? Black and Asian led theatre companies form under 1% of the Arts Council's 990 regularly-funded clients: note, 1%. Not even a piss in the ocean. Within this mote on the Arts Council's cheek, in the present funding round, more than a third of the companies are effectively on standstill (receiving a 2.7% uplift - no one in the Arts Council has been paying much attention to the economy I see). Less than a quarter get uplifts (deservedly), 1 company is added to the RFO list (about time - a company in Bradford that Tara has been supporting for several years), and a third get cuts (including ourselves).

As the new Chief Executive said to us "Our proposals will lead to a slight drop in the number of regularly funded BME led organizations". Uhh - what did McMaster say? Here's a reminder: "We live in one of the most diverse cultures the world has ever seen, yet this is not reflected in the culture we produce, or in who is producing it...nothing can be excellent without reflecting the society which produces and experiences it". 

Hmmm... who's listening? Certainly not the Arts Council.

One thing we colonised instinctively learnt (I grew up in pre-Independence Kenya) was the dictum 'divide & rule'. The Arts Council, as a willing arm of the government, has imbibed the phrase as mother's milk. This evening I think of the vast majority of clients who are, at the very least, going to bed untroubled by the current funding round. And the relatively smaller number who go to bed with gnashing teeth (I'll just make do with coffee and cigarettes - which I had given up until before Christmas).

Was it Hemingway who gave us the phrase 'For Whom the Bell Tolls'? Whoever, its certainly apt now. I think back to when Temba were removed from the Arts Council's portfolio in the mid-90s, and of the troubles Talawa had more recently. Who's next, when apparatchiks hold such sway? How can we talk of Arts with people who despise artists?

Before I finish, let me make clear one matter: I would have gone to bed with a lighter heart if, while cutting Tara, the Arts Council could also have convincingly demonstrated its real (cash) commitment to cultural diversity. I'm afraid that phrase holds as much conviction as the 'consultations' bred by New Labour.