In his response to the council’s consultation document, RIBA president David Rock said sudden changes could disrupt the work of both existing and potential applicants, “leading to abortive work, waste, frustration and antagonism towards the Arts Council”.
Rock is particularly worried about plans to devolve funding decisions for capital projects of less than £100 000 to regional arts boards.
“Regionalisation is good in theory but difficult to make work in practice,” said Rock.” A tremendous body of knowledge has been built up at the Arts Council headquarters, but the regions will have to start from scratch.” The RIBA president also criticised what he sees as a serious omission in the document. “There’s nothing about how they are going to shift money from revenue spending to capital projects. The Arts Council seems to be rather coy about how much money is going where,” he said. He also complained that the council has not taken advantage of new lottery rules that allow it to provide advice for applicants on how to apply for bids.
Rock said it has the potential to create special advisers. “In my opinion, the new rules do allow this, but they’ve hardly mentioned it in the document.” Rock’s overriding concern is that the council does not carry out change for change’s sake. “The Arts Council has developed the most friendly and sophisticated process of all the lottery bodies and we’re now worried they’re going to change something which is already working,” he said.
The council is due to present its proposals for change to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in the third week in April.
