North Yorkshire council plans to cut arts funds by 80%

North Yorkshire County Council is proposing to cut its arts budget by £115,000 from April, significantly reducing subsidies to Harrogate Theatre, Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre, the Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond and Rural Arts.

Under the proposals, NYCC’s overall arts budget will drop from £145,000 to £30,000. In a statement, it added that a fifth arts organisation, Blaize, which had received funding in 2010/11, would not be supported in the next financial year. The proposed cut will go before the full council in a meeting on February 16.

The news follows the drop in the council’s central government funding, announced in December, which has forced it to make savings of more than £57 million over the next two financial years.

NYCC’s statement concludes: “It is against this backdrop that difficult budget decisions have to be taken. The county council recognises the valuable economic, social and cultural benefits that are delivered by the arts organisations in question.

“As a result, it has striven to maintain a degree of funding for arts organisations in the face of an extremely challenging financial settlement for the county council.”

Harrogate Theatre chief executive David Bown said his venue’s annual subsidy would be cut from £63,000 to £10,000 from April, which represents a reduction of 85%. Speaking to The Stage, Bown said at a consultation meeting last summer, a number of arts organisations had told NYCC that the tipping point for funding cuts would be a reduction of 10% in the first year.

He pointed out that the theatre will also have to cope with a 8.7% real-terms cut in its Arts Council England subsidy in 2011/12. It was also one of the organisations to suffer most severely during ACE’s last round of funding decisions in 2007, with its annual support reduced from £400,000 to £150,000.

If the proposal is taken up by the council, Bown said there would be redundancies at the theatre and its education services would become vulnerable.

“The priorities that North Yorkshire [County Council] have that we were delivering against, ironically, are the things that are going to suffer here - rural outreach and education in particular,” he said.

“It will certainly affect artistic delivery in some form.”

Chris Monks, artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre, said: “Although we have had a communication from NYCC, the extent of our funding cut has not been confirmed and we are still lobbying the council before the announcement on February 16.

“We are prepared to take our fair share of the pain associated with the Coalition’s financial policies.

“However, the signs point towards a loss of investment from local and national sources, which can only lead to the demise of theatre companies and the closure of buildings.”

Source: The Stage