London arts cuts – seriously bad news
March 10, 2011 by
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On 10 March the Financial Times published an interview with Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, which includes mention of an initiative of an £80m package to boost private-giving to the arts in a scheme that sees the culture department match every £1 of private funding raised by cash-strapped arts bodies.
What we need next is a new sensible tax strategy to encourage corporate donations and bring immediate extra benefit to those arts organisations who work hard to track them down. Time to revise the Arts Council style of strategy which has become too arcane and encouraged dependency. This has also created an Upstairs/Downstairs clique of favoured luvvies and their empires who get more than their fair share.