The interview with the new chair of Arts Council England (ACE), who says she wants the organisation to “get its swagger back”, misdiagnoses the crisis facing England’s cultural system (‘I want us to be loud’: Arts Council England’s new chair aims to reconnect young people with culture, 18 September). Swagger is not what is missing. What is required is contrition, honesty and structural reform.
Eighty years after its creation, Arts Council England remains built on a 1946 architecture that privileges opera and classical institutions while systematically marginalising jazz, folk, world, brass, choral and grassroots arts and music. This is not a matter of confidence or energy; it is a matter of structural imbalance. The Review of Jazz in England (2025), Margaret Hodge’s review (2025), and ACE/Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s 2026 responses all identify bureaucracy, mistrust and inconsistent decision‑making – yet none confront the deeper failures: lottery funding misuse, national portfolio organisation dominance, regional inequity, governance opacity, and the collapse of grassroots infrastructure. These problems are not recent. Every major review confirms the same pattern: ACE’s centralised model reproduces historical privilege and suppresses contemporary cultural practice.
International evidence shows that modern cultural systems – in Scandinavia, Ireland and Australia – are built on devolved delivery, direct investment in artists, touring infrastructure, and integrated cultural‑education policy. England has none of these. ACE’s legacy architecture cannot deliver the government’s growth agenda, cannot support regional cultural economies, and cannot unlock the high‑growth potential of grassroots arts and music.
What is needed now is not swagger but a new organisation. I propose a dual‑pillar system that safeguards national institutions while establishing a dedicated body for grassroots arts and music, with transparent allocation formulas, restored lottery funding, art form‑specific policy and a national touring infrastructure. Swagger will not fix England’s cultural system. Structural reform will.
Chris Hodgkins
Ealing, London
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