This is the full transcript of Episode One of (Un)common Ground, a BAC podcast hosted by Tarek Iskander and Lyn Gardner.
The episode features a conversation with Erica Whyman, Ed Vaizey and Jo Crowley, discussing the future of arts funding, following the Hodge Review of Arts Council England.
The transcript reflects the spoken conversation, recorded at Battersea Arts Centre in January 2026, and may include minor edits for clarity.
TAREK: Hello everyone, my name is Tarek Iskander, Artistic Director of Battersea Arts Centre.
LYN: And my name is Lyn Gardner, Associate Editor of The Stage and a freelance journalist.
TAREK: So, welcome everyone to this first episode of our new BAC podcast.
There’s so much going on in the world of theatre at the moment that Lyn and I wanted to host a regular conversation where people who are working in theatre and passionate about the arts can get together and grapple with some of the really tricky issues that we’re all facing day to day. We want this to be a forum that avoids the usual platitudes and soundbites, where we can have different viewpoints and share some hard truths, but do so in a respectful and constructive way.
LYN: So today we’re going to discuss the recently landed review of the Arts Council, led by Baroness Margaret Hodge at the request of the government. What we’re looking at is, what will it mean for theatre and the arts over the next decade?
I’m sure there will be some people listening who won’t have had a chance to read the review, so let’s quickly get up to speed.
There are over 40 recommendations in the review including a radical overhaul of ACE’s application process – which received sharp criticism for being far too bureaucratic – to the replacement of the Let’s Create strategy, which has come in for quite major criticism from artists over the last few years. What Hodge suggested was a less prescriptive strategy which centres excellence, proposes a 250 million endowment fund for ACE to lever philanthropic giving, touring tax breaks and tax breaks for corporate givers, and a 50% rise in gift aid for the arts outside the M25.
Hodge also proposes a new national programme for individuals to support freelancers and professionals from underrepresented groups with £30,000 a year and giving them mentorship. This money would come from existing streams.
TAREK: Other recommendations included deferring repayment of the Cultural Recovery Fund loans, increasing NPO funding from three to five years, rolling NPO applications so they don’t all start at the same time, reintroducing art form advisory boards that we used to have years ago, and assuring organisations “that meet the highest quality standards” that they will receive at least 80% of their funding guaranteed in the first round. Baroness Hodge also proposed new local and regional decision-making boards determine funding for all those organisations except the ones that are considered nationally significant.
LYN: So, we’re joined by Jo Crowley, an independent theatre producer who was Executive Producer of 1927 for 18 years, has produced over 50 productions in 50 countries and is also co-director of the Total Theatre Network. Also here is Ed Vaizey, a Conservative member of the House of Lords who was Culture Minister in David Cameron’s government between 2010 and 2016. Last but not least, Erica Whyman, a theatre director who’s been leading British theatres for over 25 years including Southwark Playhouse and Northern Stage, where she was until 2012 when she became Deputy Artistic Director of the RSC before becoming Acting Artistic Director from 2022 to 2023. Welcome to you all.
So, Jo, Ed and Erica, you’ve all had time to digest the report. Is it a hodgepodge trying to be all things to all people, or a useful blueprint for the next decade? Jo, would you like to go first?
JO: I think there’s some interesting proposals and ideas. I find it disappointing, even though it was to be expected, that there’s not the recommendation of any more resource.
Lots of questions are raised for me. I think it’s exciting that it feels like there’s an acknowledgement of artists and artistic practise – something which, for those that make and create, has felt somewhat stifled in recent years. That’s been strong, that has come through. There are interesting recommendations that I like and others that I think are great. But there also are slightly concerning mechanisms without additional funding to see those happen.
I’m excited by the notion of an NPO for individuals, but there are some significant flags there when it talks about immediately removing resource from DYCP and developing your creative practise, and that it’s focused on emerging practitioners. I don’t think there is enough in it that looks at independent, smaller-scale organisations and artists.
LYN: Okay, let’s stop there because we’ll come back to some of the things that you think are really good in a moment. Ed, what are your feelings?
ED: Well, I agree with Jo. Let me begin by saying, first of all, that I think the Arts Council as a principle is a very good thing. We have the arm’s length principle in this country, and we would do well to hold on to it. Margaret Hodge reiterates the importance of the arm’s length principle.
When I was a minister, the great luxury of being the Culture Minister was that you had a budget but you weren’t allowed to spend it. Other people spent it on your behalf, and you couldn’t influence it politically. There was no, unfortunately, Vasey National Opera a la Trump Kennedy Centre that I could impose in return for government funding.
The second thing is that I have a huge respect for Margaret Hodge. She’s been very involved in the arts for many years. I believe she was also a Culture Minister and has chaired arts
boards. But it’s really a strategy refresh. It’s nothing that a bunch of management consultants couldn’t have come up with themselves, or a new Chief Executive of the Arts Council when they’re appointed couldn’t have recommended.
If you wanted to be really radical, you’d propose the abolition of the Arts Council. If you want to row, you should do something like I did, which is to abolish the UK Film Council and then all hell breaks loose – or indeed, as the Arts Council found when it tried to effectively abolish the English National Opera. So, there’s some good stuff in here but there’s nothing that you will read in this report that people haven’t discussed ad infinitum.
I think, if I have my time again, I would certainly just read the room as it is, which is that there are many Arts Council organisations – we’re sitting in one now, Battersea Arts Centre – which nobody would dream of defunding. They’re very much central to their local regional, national ecosystem. It would make life a lot easier if you had many more organisations that knew that they were going to be effectively permanently funded on a long-term basis rather than this slight fiction of constantly having to reapply for funding.
LYN: Okay, that’s an interesting point. I think we will come back to some of the things in that Ed, but let’s ask you, Erica.
ERICA: I do agree that Margaret has done a very good job of listening, which has not always been the case for this sector. I would go a little further in terms of that imagined version of you having a Kennedy Centre to play with, in that I do think we live in dangerous times, so I do welcome the clarity. I don’t know if it’s got any teeth, but the clarity that there must be an arm’s length principle in this moment – and I’m not talking about the current state of the UK, although I do think it’s coming our way. When you look at what’s happening in America, we need to be vigilant and not think that this is something in some dystopian future. It’s happening now.
So, I welcome the review saying very clearly that we must retain arm’s length for that reason and others. I’m interested in this conversation that’s already begun about, can we get some kind of permanence. I think the review attempts to say, let’s move in that direction, let’s remove this notion of a total lottery, starting again every time. However, building on what you both said, I understand the pragmatism of saying, we know there’s not going to be any more money, we know that we’re in economic straits as a country, that it’s very difficult to win votes by saying what we should do is spend more money on the arts.
I really grasp that but there was an opportunity for the review to say out loud that the sector is on its knees. It does say that there are vulnerabilities that we must address, but it doesn’t, for me, go far enough in saying, if we’re fiddling around with tax relief – which is a great new mechanism, I’m all for it – we are not going to replace the amount of money that’s come out of the sector. I see so much vulnerability in our theatres for individuals trying to sustain a career. I agree with Jo – it’s important to support emerging talent, but we are decimating emerged talent in this country. So, I think it hasn’t gone far enough. I understand why not. It started from the principle, you got to come at me with other ways of using money that we already have, but that doesn’t state the case vividly enough.
TAREK: But if we start somewhere like the arm’s length principle, which all of you have said is a good thing to have reasserted, is there not a danger that something like the Hodge Report has fudged this a little bit? It’s said, on the one hand, that we need something like the Arts Council to protect artists from the meddling of government – and, just to be frank, the last government was particularly bad at telling us how to do things. But, at the same time, it means that we’re fudging the real issue about not having any democratic accountability in terms of how funding is spent. When we do get councils or mayors involved in arts funding, usually it means that funding gets cut. So, there is no accountability for arts funding, which puts the arts in a very vulnerable position. Erica?
ERICA: I do agree with that. I think you do have to have both, but there can be some advantages of having a direct line to a political voice because, as you say, you’ve got some democratic purchase, you are talking to people who’ve got votes. Sometimes, that can unlock ways of thinking about the benefits of the arts in a particular community that is much better owned by that community. I’m not someone who’s really hard line. I think, in that regard about arm’s length, there should be some pockets of funding that do have that direct control. I suppose where I agree with you, if I understand correctly, the arm’s length principle has to mean that there’s really brilliant leadership of the Arts Council. I think the report, if we are a bit gloves off in this conversation, has a strong subtext – but it’s not in the text – that we need a completely different approach to that leadership that has a different level of accountability in every direction, from artists, from government, from the audiences we serve.
LYN: But does that then mean, to some degree, the Arts Council is damaged by this report, or that its leadership is damaged and under siege?
ERICA: Look, I think this leadership has lived through some very tough times, lived through the pandemic. It’s been hard, but I think the criticisms of Let’s Create are very strong in the report. I think they do say, you haven’t got this right. We could spend all evening talking about Let’s Create but, in a sense, it’s gone. What I think that reveals is the sense in which the Arts Council need to be firmly, boldly on the side of the need for art in our world. It was not served well by Let’s Create. It was attempting to do something important but which, in our view as artists, we were doing already. Instead, what it did was undermine the idea of art being something that the world we live in needs every day, whether or not you can put a badge on it saying, we reached a group of people that we hadn’t reached before. We need to tell stories to create some kind of hope and optimism about building a different world, and the Arts Council has not been advocating for that. That’s when you get to the difficulties of who’s supported and who isn’t.
ED: I mean, the trouble with the report, and the reason it reads to a certain extent like a management consultant report, is you’re dealing with one organisation, and I think the leadership of that organisation is an interesting thing to debate.
I appointed Darren Henley as the Chief Executive of the Arts Council and the fact that I appointed him, and I was a minister in 2010, tells you that Darren has been there for a very long time. At the time, he was in my view, a very good person to appoint. He came, as it were, from the private sector, if I can put it that way, from classic FM. He really attacked the job and was everywhere. Obviously, people have a shelf life, so it may be time that you have a new and fresh leadership.
I always tell people that I’m old enough to remember the first iPhone. It was probably 18 months before I became a minister. The transformation in the last 15 years of how we interact with culture has been amazing but there’s trouble with looking at the Arts Council in Silo. Erica, you’re quite right to talk about not addressing the funding but, on the other hand, it doesn’t talk about the National Lottery, which falls within the Arts Council remit. We now have this talk of a tourist tax, a hotel levy, which could be significant for arts funding. So, to just look at the Arts Council in isolation… mayors have emerged as much more powerful forces in the last 10 years than they were when I was a Culture Minister. We had the London Mayor, but no one else of real significance. Now, you’ve got real leadership – the kind of leadership you’re talking about, and that whole debate about local authority funding. There are so many other issues, and this just sits in isolation. It’s basically saying, you come into a room like this and decide what colour you’re going to paint the wallpaper, but there are much bigger conversations to have in the whole building about a whole lot of other things.
TAREK: The reason that’s happened is because successive governments have not tackled those big issues. They haven’t addressed those, or brought those things together, which is why the art sector, the Arts Council and others are left scrambling around, meddling with the colour of the walls rather than addressing the issue. It’s not in their gift to do so.
ED: Well, I wouldn’t agree with that. We published the first white paper in 2016, which doesn’t get a mention in Margaret Hodges report. Labour Ministers are only allowed to talk about Jennie Lee’s white paper. They’re banned from talking about my white paper. I was proud that we published the first white paper in 50 years, but it’s very telling that you have to wait 50 years for a culture white paper. Talking about a white paper sounds very navel gazing but, to a certain extent, it’s the only real mechanism you have to try and create a holistic arts policy, looking at things like music education or criminal justice or arts and health as well as a whole host of other things that matter as well as the big picture of the organisations. I got as far as merging the museums, libraries and archives collection with the Arts Council, but there’s no debate – the British council was 10 years before the Arts Council. They exist side by side, because that’s always how it’s been. There’s no joining up and no big picture, so perhaps that is the missed opportunity.
JO: I was just reflecting on the fact that there are some positive ideas and recommendations but, if I was to look at the report in the context of how NPOs are measured by the Arts Council and their risk register, the criticisms of the strategy, of the systems, of the political sway that the Arts Council have had in last the last few years… that would be a very high risk rating for an organisation that was being funded by the Arts Council. Potentially, it would be on special measures. So, whilst it’s not explicit in its criticism of leadership, if I was to flip it and imagine that it’s an Arts Council England funded organisation, there’s a lot of criticism there that’s not explicit, that perhaps really does need to be addressed and that might require consideration about what the leadership is going forwards. But it is also very clear about the necessity, value and importance of having and retaining an Arts Council, which I think anyone who’s working in the sector also really does believe.
I just want to echo what Erica said. We do feel heard and listened to, which is not to be undervalued. Sometimes, when consultants are brought in to run reviews of things, it doesn’t feel like that. This does feel like people have been listened.
ED: I think we should also ask ourselves the question, what was the point of this review? That’s been slightly lost in the midst of time. I assume it’s because of the English National Opera debacle and the idea that a secretary of state could intervene in a significant way and the Arts Council, in some people’s eyes said, ‘how high?’ when asked to jump. That was an error, I think most people agree, the way it was handled, even if one agrees with the principle that lay behind the decision. But does it warrant a full-scale review of the Arts Council and, if you are going to do a full-scale review, does a lot of individual, small recommendations have an impact? Also, how is it going to be followed up?
LYN: Those are important questions. I’m interested by you, Erica and Jo, talking about how it feels as though she really listened. Isn’t there also a problem that maybe Baroness Hodge listened too hard? She listened to every possible point of view and, somehow, they are all in this report. What you end up with is something that is trying to please everybody and will end up pleasing nobody and be very difficult to implement.
ERICA: I think that’s interesting analysis. I see your point because I do yearn for the big idea that upturns it in some way. It’s extremely difficult conditions in which to have that big idea and not risk getting rid of a commitment to funding the arts at all. I’m not talking about the current government, but the next government could easily do that, and it could be sooner than we think. I understand the jeopardy in the big idea so I, on the one hand, agree. On the other hand, there’s something interesting in Jo’s point about the set of risks, because maybe we should read the review differently. The review suggests some things that, over the medium term, could make quite a big difference.
We’ve slowly but surely eradicated the voice of artists in the Arts Council, I would argue. I don’t, of course, think artists should make decisions entirely on their own about themselves and their funding, but I do think if we want to see risk, real innovation, a sense of how we break through to audiences who are perhaps not feeling that they belong in the world of the arts, you’ve got to have artists in that conversation. I think the current leadership would argue that they have.
I would say that it’s become such a circular conversation about how you deliver Let’s Create while still trying on the side to make something artistic – that’s a really harsh reduction of what it’s meant to do but is how it’s perceived by a lot of people – then if you change who is having that conversation, so one of your small things so to speak, and there are a couple of them in there – it’s about the art form panels caring about art forms and thinking about it that has partly come from the decision. Like, who was thinking about opera, who was thinking about new writing? It’s not just the decimation of new writing in London, because we’re all very keen and signed up – I certainly am – to making sure that the funds spread across the country, but it’s meant that the grassroots new work organisations in London are in huge trouble. If you take care of art forms, if you also make sure there is some regional advice that’s got depth, not just one person on the national council – that’s one of her recommendations – if you do those things, you are changing the conversation. I don’t want to be polyamorous about it but I do think we should think that some of the small tactics are designed to make sure that, when we are having even harder conversations about funding, which I think are coming, we’ve got the right people in the room. I would defend it on that basis. I really worry that the way we talk about innovation and risk in the arts – and it’s been true all of my career – is it’s marginal, it gets nowhere near the conditions you actually need to have a brilliant idea.
Also, buried in the report is that the money has to come commercially, that’s what it means to be more reliant on tax relief. So how do you have the big idea, the big, brilliant idea that isn’t commercial? That’s what I’m missing in it, to agree with you.
ED: I hear what Jo says – she feels that the artistic community has been listened to – and it slightly gets me going, because it’s like reviewer’s therapy. I want a review that’s actually going to achieve something and move the dial, as far as the arts is concerned.
It’s interesting what you said, Erica, about the commercial aspect of the arts, and what is the big idea that’s not commercial. I find that an interesting and, from my perspective, slightly odd juxtaposition. Some of the stuff in Margaret Hodge’s report, which hasn’t necessarily been picked up on and given its own narrative, is that there is a lot about making the publicly funded arts more commercial. There is this idea of the Arts Council being a ‘theatre angel,’ to use an analogy, that they get money back from a successful investment – and I use the word advisedly – in an art form that suddenly takes off. To a certain extent, it chimed with me because I remember, when I was the minister, the real change I wanted to see from the Arts Council was for it to become a centre of expertise. As I said earlier, this was a time when technology was suddenly arriving in a big way and my dream was the Arts Council having this centre of R&D where anyone could go – Battersea Arts Centre could go – and say “right, what the hell is going on? What is this thing called YouTube? How should we use it?” and find experts. So, that’s one thing.
The other thing I’ve been reflecting on as you’ve been talking is, I grew up in the 70s and 80s and my mum was on the Arts Council. At the time, it seemed a big deal. Obviously, it was a different world – you had the BBC you had three TV channels. The Arts Council was a big deal. It doesn’t feel like a big deal now. Where are the arts leaders who are, not just producing great work, but leading the conversation about the arts in Britain after the first quarter of the 21st century? That seems to me a huge gap.
ERICA: May I say, I firmly agree with you. The answer is, they’re frantically trying to keep their buildings open, and they are having to be more ruthless about that than ever in the last 30 years I would say. So, that’s one answer in the theatre. But I crave it – where is the conversation? I understand that, in this country, it sounds paradoxical to say ‘a great new idea that isn’t commercial’ but if we were in the Netherlands, it would not.
ED: But we have better art.
ERICA: Ah now we’re at it! We have more accessible art. I would agree that we have more accessible art. What we don’t do is, instead of asking “how can artists make better use of YouTube”– we do that, and we do it much better than we used to – we don’t say, “what is this thing called fascism, and what should artists do about that?” I’m banging on about fascism tonight, but I could have picked any number of things that are on fire in our world. We don’t think that’s the primary purpose. The primary purpose is to have an idea good enough to make some money, so then you need Let’s Create.
ED: No, I don’t agree with that. I think that’s a gap, a void left by the artistic leadership I’m talking about. I don’t agree with you, in an era where President Zelenskyy is trying to keep the lights on in Ukraine, that just trying to keep your doors open at an arts centre prevents you from speaking out about the place of the arts. It could be about the state of the arts in Britain, it could be about how the arts respond to fascism, but that’s a whole separate issue. What I say is, there’s no artistic leadership in terms of what the art should look like, how they should be supported in this country. There’s no interesting conversation going on, it seems to me.
ERICA: I mean… I agree and…. I think both conversations are needed.
JO: There’s so many different things bubbling away there. To pick up on the artists feeling listened to, I think it’s important we recognise the disenfranchisement of artists. It’s most likely that somebody is having an exceptional idea about how to explore fascism, but they’re too busy trying to keep a roof over their head because they can’t access resource, or they can’t access space, because everyone’s struggling to make everything work. The whole system and ecology has been – I don’t want to say it’s been decimated – but it’s been extremely challenged over recent years. I don’t think the things are disconnected. They really are connected, and I think it’s important to note that artists feeling like they’ve been listened to reflects that there has been significant disenfranchisement over the last 15 years. That’s something that has to be acknowledged and addressed.
ED: But what does it mean?
JO: I think I think it means that we need to address how we support those who have the great ideas and who the next generation of leaders potentially are. Some of those leaders – I don’t mean those that are emerging, some of them are already established – they’re struggling to do what they do, or they’ve already left the industry in whichever art form they’re working in.
I do also need to say, there is something around art form and practise and place. We haven’t mentioned place, but I think it’s important we have a conversation. Whilst it doesn’t directly criticise the place-based agenda of Let’s Create, let’s be honest, it has been very place focused. It’s one of the only things I have read recently that acknowledges what the touring sector and those artists and practitioners that work peripatetically have been talking about for years, which is, “hello, we’re here, but we’re struggling.”
It does feel, for the first time, that somebody is listening to the necessity to look at what it means to move, the mechanisms that are needed and, importantly, the strategy that needs to sit behind. Understanding what is needed to enable artists and practitioners to make in different places, to move in different places, which then raises all sorts of other questions in the report around nationally significant organisations, decision making, all of that. It just starts to unravel. So, whilst I think there’s some interesting points, there’s big concerns and there’s lots of unravelling that happens within the report itself.
ERICA: I just want to endorse something, partly for Ed’s benefit.
You and I, Jo, were in a conversation while the review was underway, with a very large number of artists – 100, maybe 200 artists – in the follow-up to the conversation, who are mostly either running micro-organisations or working on their own. The levels of mental ill health and, at the same time, sense of passionate determination to try and do something, a sense that Let’s Create was designed to support them but hasn’t done so, has put them under untold pressures where they’re caught between trying to have space to have that idea and trying to meet the requirements that they’ve signed up to, those that were funded. I knew quite a lot of that stuff, being in different rooms over the years, and I was shocked by the extent of it. It cannot go on. Very small things, in Lyn’s hodgepodge, like introducing grants for individuals at a higher level… those small things will actually make a difference if you get the selection right.
ED: Yes, that’s great. It’s a great little policy, fantastic, and it mimics to a certain extent what the Irish have done.
I think people on the outside, perhaps not involved in the arts, listening to this conversation, would say, “well, let’s talk about the mental health of farmers, or the mental health of publicans.” One of the things I felt very strongly about when I was Arts Minister, was that there is this tone in the arts world that anyone who wants to be an artist can be an artist. Well, that’s not true, and it’s not true in any walk of life. I would like to be a Royal Marine. That’s never going to happen. I’d like to win Wimbledon. That’s never going to happen. Secondly, that no institution can ever fail or go out of business. There are businesses going out of business every single day because they just don’t make it work. I do think the Arts Council should just bite the bullet and say there are – you can see it from the statistics in the Hodge Report. There’s five, six hundred arts organisations that are perpetually funded.
They’re perpetually funded because they’re established, they’re very much part of the ecosystem, but this idea that no arts organisation should ever close or fail, I’ve always found completely bizarre.
ERICA: I don’t think that at all. What I meant was… to take your point about Royal Marines, you can train, you can qualify or not. If you qualify, you have a job, you can put a roof over your head, you can have a family, you can pay a mortgage. That’s not true in our world. You can train, you can qualify – If qualifying means getting an excellent review. That doesn’t mean you’ve got a job or a salary or can pay a mortgage or support a family. It’s that. Yes of course, it’s important with emerging talent, but one of the real crises that I think she does touch on is what happens next. You’ve emerged, you’ve had seven thousand pounds from Develop Your Creative Practise. You made a show or set up a tiny company. You made something and it was a success. That’s what I’m talking about.
I completely agree with you, I think long gone – and I hope it stays long gone – is the sense that all arts organisations should be perpetuated, including the very largest. We need to constantly ask, “really, is that the right institution?” but do it in a way that doesn’t mean they’re in perpetual assessment. So, I wasn’t suggesting that at all, but I do think we’re losing real talent, really interesting approaches, ways to make theatre, ways to reach audiences, ways to reshape the world. That’s what I meant by it. We haven’t in the last decade – well maybe a little bit longer, since the financial crash in 2008 – we haven’t had a mechanism supporting people who emerge. I joke about a review, but that is our mechanism. The market decides, and the market is not always right about art, nor is it about farming.
ED: No, but the analogy might be with sport. It’s a mechanism, it’s nothing grander than a mechanism to deliver a result. It was decided with the Olympics coming in 2012, that lottery money was going to be used in a ruthless fashion to win more gold medals. So, in a sense, Erica, is that what you’re saying about the arts? I really don’t want to get caught up by Royal Marine analogy. I have no idea why I said that except it’s January and everyone’s thinking about their fitness and how fat they are – well I am. Not everyone, not every sport was going to get funded by Sport England. We were going to win gold medals in swimming, but we weren’t necessarily going to win it in… badminton, I’m sure someone will correct me. So, the money went to swimming and the results came.
So, in some senses, aren’t you advocating quite a ruthless proposal, which I would support, which is to say you pick winners early on and you fund them properly and you deliver results. To a certain extent, that goes back to what we’ve all been beating around the bush about a bit, which is funding. No one is having a conversation about putting the money where it matters. One of my favourite stories – I don’t want to bore you to tears – I went to see Julia Peyton-Jones when she ran the Serpentine when I was in the opposition, and she said “it’s terrible, we get no money from the Arts Council because we’re successful and we feel we are being punished for our success”. I don’t know why I did this – I sent her a t-shirt saying ‘punished for my success’ on it after the meeting, because I was so struck by the phrase. It was an interesting point because what she was saying is partly because everyone has to be listened to and there has to be something for everyone in the report. Perhaps arts funding is not ruthless enough and you back the people who are doing great work, and you let the stragglers – I’m afraid – fall by the wayside.
TAREK: But behind that idea, – I think what you’re all hinting at, which I think is part of the challenge with what this report is highlighting – is that there is a lack of a central idea. There’s a lack of a central passion and inspiration that we’re all getting behind, against which we can measure that success or not success; against which we can make proper funding decisions that we’d all get behind. This report has not done that. it’s given us a load of technical things which you may say are good or bad.
ED: Yes, which, if you know a lot about culture strategy, you can get into the weeds.
TAREK: Great, but it’s not going to get any headlines because it doesn’t get the heart racing. Isn’t the real crisis that what Baroness Hodge did was a lot of listening. You could argue she didn’t do enough analysis. We all malign Let’s Create, but at least there were some figures and data in there. She did a lot of listening and, collectively, the sector was unable to provide the inspiration or ideas that could go into the report. So, this report hasn’t done it. The Arts Council has achieved lots of things, like securing the sector in very difficult times, but has not provided the inspiration. If we can’t do it as artists… isn’t that the core of the problem? Why no report will ever address the underlying challenge around the arts funding or otherwise.
ED: I agree. I think that’s a shrewd thought. It’s a great challenge because, to a certain extent, everyone is too nice. When I joked at the beginning that, to make a splash, she should have proposed the abolition of the Arts Council… we are content to tinker with our institutions and our system. Maybe that is the answer. Maybe you just tinker, but there is no big radical idea except the Whyman Vaizey Olympic artist proposal, which has emerged from this podcast.
ERICA: Very good. I think the absence of a big idea is a real problem, I do. I’m a defender of quite a lot of the tinkering. I’m a fan of listening to the sector because I do think that some of the deep vulnerabilities and the potential of the sector has been untapped in recent years, so I’m a fan of that as a process.
I hear the point that what you then get is, can we just do everything a little bit better? Or in ways that might produce better results in the future. I really agree about that. It’s really good, the Olympic analogy, because it both gets at the similarity and – for me – the difference. It isn’t a race, we’re not just trying to win. You can’t put – I can’t even do it – you can’t put My Neighbour Totoro up against… name something you can’t put it up against.
ED: Hamnet.
ERICA: Yeah, you can’t do that. Both RSC shows! You know you can’t put one of my favourite new plays of the last decade, Shook – beautiful, beautiful play about masculinity. It’s heart-hitting, it’s political, it’s brilliantly written, it’s very funny, beautifully acted, Southwark Playhouse, tiny piece of work. Very little money just trying to get that on. Incredibly important. That’s backing winners, that show – backing the writer, backing the actors, backing Southwark Playhouse. You can’t say which one is the Olympic winner, My Neighbour Totoro or Shook the play. It’s kind of insanity, a dangerous insanity that says: the way to make a handful of things but do them really well is to put those things up against each other.
The way you can use the sporting analogy – I understand this particularly happened in cycling – is, what are the things you could do? The small things, perhaps, where every single one makes everyone more likely to succeed? That technique, that kind of set of tactics… I think the review maybe wants to do that. I don’t think it does. So, there is something about you can’t do it without the goal. To agree with you, Tarek, you can’t do it, what is the goal? It seems to me we need to start saying out loud, not just that we need My Neighbour Totoro, but we also need Shook the play. We also need work to be expressing all the different flavours of this country, not just so the audiences nearby them can see something, but because that then expresses the full range of our humanity in this moment. We don’t say that. For me, that’s the missing vision.
TAREK: Erika, could I boil this down into a banal choice though. Is it because there are a lot of people in the arts who believe in art and believe – whether you call it excellence or something else – that there is an intrinsic beauty of art? And are there some people who just believe art should be for everyone and should be available in every corner and doorstep? Those two things haven’t been easy to merge and have been competing priorities. Or is that an oversimplistic, silly way of putting it?
ERICA: It’s not silly, as you know. It is infuriating, because – I say that with a great deal of respect – I think I’ve been having this conversation for 30 years. I think we all around this table know that when you go into a theatre that has found a way to tell a story and tell a story about that story that invites people in, in a real way, there is no division between the two. That might be a theatre in which a workshop is happening, or in which a huge new show is happening. It’s a false division that we are repeatedly in the art sector asked to perpetuate.
There was a very distinguished leader in our sector who said, not long after Let’s Create was published, “It’s really easy, all we do is, we separate the two things. Those of us…” – I think is the subtext of his remarks – “those of us who are making real art, let us do that, fund us to do that. Those of you who aren’t because you’re in Bradford or because you care about the disabled community or because you’re interested in trying to counter fascism, you go and do that somewhere else and leave the real art to us.” It is nonsense. It makes me really furious.
LYN: Well, that obviously was Nicholas Hytner who made that intervention. In a way – Ed, I guess what you were saying happened with the Olympics – that we’re going to win medals in swimming and rowing, so we put money into that. He suggested, really, that we follow the way that the Sports Council works – a complete separation between the elite and between the grassroots. But, we all know, if you look at something like tennis, for example – let’s use another sporting analogy – if you fund the elite, what you don’t end up with is people in parks playing tennis or being supported in any way. I think what we clearly have to do both. I absolutely subscribe to Erica’s idea that we naturally do both, but it seems to me that Let’s Create as a policy is now a dead duck in the water. That, I think, raises some questions about what the way forward will be for the Arts Council and for the sector in the immediate future.
JO: I think the challenge is that we’re separating the elite and participation as though they’re in opposition, and they’re absolutely not.
ED: I agree.
JO: They really, really are not. It’s interesting, the examples you just gave, Erica, around those two different productions. If the Arts Council or anyone is doing their role properly in terms of articulating, as a development agency, how things are intricately connected, they’re giving voice to how those things are connected and how participation and main stage opera productions are not different to each other. They work in different ways, but sometimes the practitioners, the artists, the audience, the participants are the same people.
There are organisations who are moving around the country and working in different ways. There are artists and practitioners working in participation at the top, internationally respected elite side of their practise. We’ve got to give voice and visibility to that and I think that does begin to pick apart the comments that the Arts Council has not been looking at its role as a development agency. There is something around the profile and the visibility and beginning to stop that opposition. The opposition is not there. There is no less value if an organisation is just focussing on participation, or just focussing on the creation of exceptional art. The two things are the same, and they should not be put in opposition to each other. Sometimes they are literally delivered by the same people, and we need to remember that. There is a genuine call for a lot of artists and practitioners that want to create, they want to connect, and they need to develop what they are creating in dialogue with others.
TAREK: Do you think, Jo, that the report is going to help deliver that? If there’s a consensus that we all believe in what we’re doing, we all know how it’s going…Is the report going to get us to where we need to get to?
JO: I mean, no, because there’s not enough resource. The mechanisms that are being suggested… they’re sticky plasters. When we talk about taking money from one fund to give it to another… well, all we’re doing is just moving around the problems possibly. That’s my fear. I fear that, without significant resource – I do think there are interesting ideas around endowments – there’s no follow through about how that money would then be used or applied, which is interesting. There’s a lot of absence in the recommendations. To answer your question, I don’t think so.
ERICA: I think it’s not just the resource, although I agree with that.
Coming back to leadership… one form of leadership that’s urgently required is to be properly in conversation with various forms of money. There’s been a strange taboo about the Arts Council themselves being in that dialogue. You know, that’s for people leading organisations. The trouble is, as lots of us know, you’re leading the organisation, you’re only looking for finance for your own organisation, and you’re in competition with each other. It seems to me that there’s this kind of itch in the report, trying to get out, which is just be much bolder about commercial investments, think differently about tax relief. It’s asking us to think imaginatively about it, but we haven’t had leadership in the Arts Council that can unlock that on a bigger scale. I do think it should be part of their role, both in terms of thinking with government about things that the Hodge Review haven’t yet discovered, about how there might be other ways to unlock money for the arts, also with the commercial sector.
We were talking earlier about the kind of big idea and the vision of it… When Eleanor Lloyd was President of SOLT, I was very lucky to be in the room for The Oliviers because of that show about a strange creature in Japan. Eleanor gave a speech that made me go, that’s what we need. Somebody whose DNA is in the commercial sector, a commercial producer, she looked at the room and said, “we all know it’s not just us, right?” Like, we’re winners tonight, but we understand that none of us could be here without all the other artists making work that has enabled us to be here – sometimes with us, sometimes behind us, sometimes work that isn’t going to win these awards because of what it is. So, that thing about naming winners so that we break the illusion that it’s like sport.
It just isn’t like sport. It’s not that the people who can’t do it, or can’t do it as well as the elite artists, coach on a Saturday morning out of love. It isn’t that. Some of the most brilliant practitioners move between all those spaces or are happier doing whatever it is they do on a Saturday morning and are brilliant at it.
ED: There are two points here which are provocative for me to make.
To a certain extent, the arts do give the impression, lobby – if I can put it that way – that people in the arts are owed a living. I think that is one of the big problems that the arts community has in how it puts itself forward, not just to government but to the public.
The less controversial point I was going to make was to agree with Jo. Going back to the Hodge Review, what are the missing pieces? There is this sense that government funding for the arts is a terrible cliche, the venture capital of the arts. There’s no mention of the Netflix’s, the YouTube’s and so on, who are making gazillions based on talent that was originally honed effectively through public subsidy. And that is a big missing conversation because some people in the commercial arts will say “we succeed, we don’t need government handouts, who are these moaning people?” And the counter argument is, those are the moaning people who have trained the people that you’re now using to make gazillions. So that conversation is completely missing, and maybe that’s not important, but it is interesting.
LYN: But what isn’t missing, of course, is that she does make the suggestion that talent, innovation which creates product in the subsidised sector… that there should perhaps be a return. So, if you make the Totoro’s or the Matilda’s or the War Horse’s, that some money should go back to the Arts Council to be reinvested. As somebody who’s come from an organisation that has made two out of those three, Erica, what’s your view on that?
ERICA: I think it makes a great deal of sense. It’s complicated my next answer for me, but the truth is, that’s a really hard thing to ask of them in a circumstance where their business model is now entirely reliant on them coming up with a hit like that every couple of years. So, it’s tricky. I really do endorse it. I do think it’s the right way to think about where we’ve put a great deal of money, public money, into those shows, to get them off the ground. But how do you unpick that?
ED: It’s incredibly difficult and we looked at this as well because there are no new ideas. To a certain extent, you should take it back one stage, which is – the National Theatre I’m sure is now extremely good at this – what are the tools you give the subsidised arts so, when they have a hit, they do the right deal with the commercial partner.
The key point is – you take a Warhorse, you take a commercial partner… the commercial partner knows how to make money, they make a tonne of money. Make sure that the organisation knows that it’s going to get the money back, because that money, when it comes back to the National Theatre, is going to be reinvested in the National Theatre, which makes the Arts Council’s job of supporting the National Theatre slightly easier.
TAREK: Ed, I’m going to pick you up on that last comment, which is there’s no new ideas. One thing I think there’s a bit of consensus on is that we all believe in money coming in for the arts in different ways. I agree with Erica that this is not a race and there’s different ways that we can measure success, but one thing we’re all sort of saying is that this report is not hitting the right notes in terms of pushing us to an idea, big ideas, that we can all get behind. It’s not addressing some of the real, core issues that we’ve been grappling with for a very long time and so it doesn’t address what we really need.
What sport has, that I think theatre doesn’t have at the moment, is a grand narrative that the population as a whole can get behind and can support, regardless of those comparisons between sports and arts. We’re missing that grand narrative a bit for our art form. So, let’s accept that the Arts Council has done its best but maybe has not delivered that.
Let’s accept that the Hodge Report has lots of things we could all sign up to – they’re all our own ideas that we regurgitated in different ways, so we could all get behind them. But what do we want to happen next? We need something desperate to happen next.
I’m going to give you all the last words. Just give us one thing that’s going to take us a step forward in a way the Hodge Report hasn’t. I suppose, the challenge is, you are all arts leaders in different ways. The gauntlet has been set that the answers have to come from arts leaders, not from elsewhere. Where do we go?
ED: Well, the silence that followed your question will cheer up Margaret Hodge because we’ve merrily been picking apart her report. I think the fact that I can’t answer you immediately with a grand idea shows how difficult it is, and to a certain extent, I was going to say let’s not be too downbeat. We are very good at the arts and, I think, like all our institutions, we don’t see us as others see us all around the world. The arts are the calling card for this country, and we’re hugely respected for it.
I feel mortified and embarrassed by your question because my answer was going to be what I always wanted, which was a clear settlement for the arts that was long term. I used to compare it to international development, which is obviously a terrible comparison to make now. I tried to listen as an Arts Minister, and what I heard time and time and time again is please tell us how much money we’ve got as soon as you can and for a long period of time. I mean, it’s astonishing – I think the arts budget hasn’t even been settled for April 2026.
JO: I have no idea. I don’t know how to answer that question, which is really worrying and concerning. Going back to the national significance, we’ve got the story of sports right to an extent in this country and the country understands it and the value of it. We need to work out how we make the national significance, the value of the arts and we need some really, really strong leadership to come in to be able to do that.
ERICA: It is of course hard, but I don’t find it impossible. I think we’ve been touching on it. I want to imagine a world in which our Arts Council is that leadership, is a porous combination of our audiences, our artists, and our great strategic thinkers, and is able to set out a narrative that defends all of it. Not all of it indiscriminately, not moaning, I really take that point. Absolutely not saying we’re entitled but being able to say – these artists that we support, some of them are great conglomerates of organisations and some are all on their own and they’re all the winners. These are the British arts, we are thrilled by them, and we’re thrilled to support them.
One thing that the dismantling of Let’s Create does offer is that push and pull between, is it this glittery thing over here or is it something that people have been neglecting and not looking at? We’ve had all these years now of demonstrating the benefits of Let’s Create, so the time is right for that leadership to say, this must be defended. Here is the portfolio. We’re bold, we’re strong, we’re clear about why it’s the portfolio. Of course, we might make a mistake here and there but we’re confident that these are the people and ideas that we want to support, and the practises we want to support. If we had that, we would get somewhere nearer to a settlement with the public where they could be proud of their artists, as they are of their sports people.
LYN: I really couldn’t do anything but second what Erica is saying. I think, as far as the Arts Council is concerned, it needs to be less defensive. And I think it needs to sort out Grantium immediately, because that will stop a lot of frustrations with artists.
TAREK: I just want to say on behalf of everyone, thank you so much.
Thank you, Erica. Thank you, Jo. Thank you, Ed. Thanks to my co-host, Lyn, for joining this first of many conversations. I’m sure we’ve raised more questions than answers but that’s always the way with these things. Thank you all for listening to the bitter end. We really appreciate you and are looking forward to connecting with you again soon.