The UK government closes its review into Arts Council England

The fate of the Archer review into Arts Council England (ACE) has been unclear for some time. After a government review of ACE was announced in March—led by Mary Archer, a former chair of the Science Museum Group—the public review was paused before the general election in July. After an email from a Labour government minister suggested that this review won’t happen at all, a spokesperson from the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) confirmed to VAN that the Archer review is now closed.

“You have also asked about the public body review into Arts Council England,” Chris Bryant MP told Elizabeth Atherton, a soprano turned arts campaigner, in an email seen by VAN and circulated on X, formerly Twitter. “The public body review was paused during the election and has now been closed. We are considering next steps and further details will be announced in due course.”

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The news is a blow to those within classical music who have campaigned for more accountability on the spending of public money within the Arts Council framework. As VAN has reported previously, ACE has drawn criticism for its abrupt budget cuts to English National Opera and Welsh National Opera; its radical funding shake-up, which saw contemporary music and opera particularly impacted; and for its Let’s Create strategy, which shifted the balance of funding towards community arts projects. Public confidence in the Arts Council hasn’t been aided by a number of hair-raising moments in the press, most memorably in November 2022, when ACE chief executive Darren Henley described the future of opera as “opera in car parks, opera in pubs, opera on your tablet,” rather than, say, opera in an opera house.

The update raises questions about the Labour Party’s approach to ACE. In a general election where party manifestos offered slim pickings for those in the arts and culture sector, a review into ACE was seen as a key distinguishing factor for the Labour party. Before the general election in July, then Shadow Culture Secretary (and former orchestral cellist) Thangam Debbonaire publicly stated that Labour was committed to reviewing ACE, and the Labour manifesto said it would implement the Creative Industries Sector plan, which included a review of ACE. It was “time to re-discover the core purpose of the Arts Council,” the plan noted.

However, just two months into the new administration, the Archer review is now closed. (A representative for Bryant didn’t respond to a request for comment from VAN on the latest news.) On September 11, culture minister Lisa Nandy told the Financial Times that she had commissioned a map of the funding landscape in the UK, in order to better understand the country’s “funding deserts where people just aren’t able to access arts and culture at all.” (A new review would start from this context.) But timeframes for this work are currently unclear, and a review, originally due in July, is now pushed further into the future. ¶