Recommendation 4

HM Government · verbatim extract Acknowledged

The Government, and Arts Council England, have taken major steps to rebalance funding across regions. This has primarily been achieved through targeting additional investment, along with a redistribution of funding from London to places elsewhere in England. 12 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bradford-crowned-uk-city-of-culture-2025 13 https://warwick.ac.uk/about/cityofculture/researchresources/uk_coc_2021_interim_report_-_january_2022_web. pdf A commitment to rebalance Arts Council England funding was among the most significant policies in the Levelling Up White Paper. The White Paper, published in February 2022, committed all additional Arts Council England funding allocated at the Spending Review 2021 to be distributed to benefit culture and creativity outside London. The White Paper also committed to identifying over 100 places outside London that will be the focus for additional Arts Council England engagement and investment. As a result, DCMS and Arts Council England jointly identified 109 Levelling Up for Culture Places (LUCPs) through a data-driven methodology highlighting the areas with the greatest need and lowest rates of historical cultural investment and engagement.14 The 2023–26 Arts Council England Investment Programme, announced in November 2022, will increase the number of funded organisations in these LUCPs by 79% (from 107 to 192 organisations) and will increase the level of investment in LUCPs by 95%, or £21.2m per annum. Over the life of the next Spending Review period this will mean more funding for more arts organisations, museums, libraries, and heritage sites and visitor attractions in more places across England–and will ensure a more equitable spread of cultural opportunity. Current Arts Council England funding policy does not impose a distinction between ‘world class, national cultural institutions’ and ‘local and regional cultural organisations’. Of course, cultural sector organisations vary in scale and international significance, but they are part of a genuinely national cultural sector, which is itself made up of hyper-local, local and regional clusters–each with a degree of interdependence. While it is true that larger cultural organisations are located disproportionately in London (and indeed other major cities), this is not exclusively so, and even given the scale of these organisations they are also part of local cultural ecosystems–and this needs to be taken into account. Larger organisations both support and also depend on a range of other organisations at different scales. Likewise, these organisations are part of broader creative industry clusters and destination and visitor economies. There is a risk that differentiating ‘national’ from ‘local’ organisations could create or entrench divisions within the sector, perhaps even leading to barriers to growth and innovation. High quality is not uniquely provided by large-scale organisations, and Arts Council England seeks only to invest in organisations that provide high quality creative and cultural opportunities. Arts Council England’s approach to investing in its next National Portfolio (organisations that will receive revenue funding for three years from 1 April 2023) was designed to support this whole-sector approach, and was agreed with DCMS, albeit in a way that supported the application of the arm’s-length principle. Decision-making on the Portfolio knitted together local and national perspectives, with decisions under £1m annual grants taken by Area Councils, and decisions over £1m annual grants taken by National Council.