The arts have taken such a battering in the UK over the last decade that they sometimes seem like an old ship holed beneath the waterline, with an orchestra valiantly continuing to play on deck. Nobody really knows what to do apart from bailing out water, firing occasional SOS flares and trying to keep the music going. So it is refreshing when new ideas are introduced.
Earlier this month, Sir Nicholas Hytner, a former head of the publicly funded National Theatre and now founder-director of the unfunded Bridge Theatre, proposed a radical solution. A future government, he wrote, should follow the lead of sport and devolve arts funding into two separate bodies: one would support community initiatives, education and outreach programmes, leaving the Arts Council to focus “on making the best possible art by professional artists for the most diverse audience”.
