Criticism
The Council attracted criticism from the Parliamentary select committee responsible for its oversight for supporting a Lottery funded programme to subsidise UK film production that resulted in a series of films that failed to find distribution. There was also a series of costly capital projects such as the Royal Opera House and the Lowry Centre that required additional funding. In the case of the Royal Opera House the select committee found the Arts Council had broken its own procedures. In 2005 it was announced that the Arts Council England's budget was capped resulting in an effective £30m reduction in its budget.
The Arts Council of England funds a controversial cultural festival, the Festival of Muslim Cultures.
In March 2006, the Arts Council announced a review of its National Office that would "enhance efficiency and delivery while continuing to provide respected and focused arts leadership and drive", whilst proposing to lose 42 posts, mainly arts specialists, so that the organisation will no longer have dedicated national leads for areas including contemporary music, interdisciplinary art, moving image, architecture, broadcasting, opera, social inclusion, disability, and so on.
Arts Council England's music policy is controversial with jazz enthusiasts. It spends more than 90% of its music budget on opera. Jazz has an equivalent audience size but receives less than 1%. This point was raised in Chris Hodgkins's 1998 paper Jazz in the UK. More recently it was raised in the House of Lords by Lord Colwyn on 11 May 2006 as documented in the Lords Hansard Columns (1058 to 1060).
Read more about this topic: Arts Council England
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.”
—Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897)
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)