Investing in the future of music

Last week, the Arts Council unveiled its new national portfolio and along with it, news of major changes for our investment in music. The process of building the final portfolio took place over five months, and involved Arts Council staff, our five Area Councils and our National Council. We are pleased to be supporting 990 organisations, 139 of which are music organisations - an increase from 101 in the previous portfolio and more than ever before.

This was the most competitive funding round yet, with over 1,700 applications. Decision making within our budget allocated from Government wasn’t easy.

I know the removal of funding has led to painful news for some organisations, their employees and supporters. As a strategic funding body, we sometimes have to make, as our Chair Sir Nicholas Serota described it, “invidious choices.” Even though our instincts may be to protect everything we already know to be of value, we can’t and shouldn’t be making the same choices in perpetuity. Our job is to invest in excellent and ambitious work, to reflect the broad range of public taste, and to create opportunity for new generations of musical talent and people from all backgrounds. Our obligation is not to avoid change, but to try and manage difficult changes fairly. We want to see new organisations coming into the portfolio and ensure that our acclaimed institutions work dynamically and continue to evolve, and that audiences continue to be delighted, challenged and inspired by the work they see.

We will do what we can to ensure organisations leaving the portfolio or receiving a reduction in funding will have the financial help they need, so they can treat those who work for them compassionately and fairly through any change. In order to support organisations leaving the portfolio through major adjustments, we have more than doubled the provision for Transition funding to make a full year’s funding available. This consists of five months funding through until the end of this portfolio, in March 2023, and then, by application, up to a further seven months, taking them to the end of October 2023 at their existing level of investment.

I know that there will be many people who would like to understand more about our decisions, so I’d like to take this opportunity to explain that change: why we believe it is strategic and necessary for the long-term benefit of the nation’s musical ecology overall, and how we will take care to implement change over a period of years.

The Arts Council’s plan for change

There’s a strategic context for last week’s announcement. Firstly, our conversations and research with the public over the last five years have consistently revealed that people value high quality accessible culture on their doorsteps. That insight has informed our strategy for 2020-2030, Let’s Create, which seeks to achieve a fairer spread of investment across England. In an endorsement of the value of culture to the everyday lives of most people in this country, the government increased our funding at the recent Spending Review to benefit areas outside London, and at the same time instructed us to increase investment in the rest of the country by £24 million per annum by 2026. This has meant we have had to make some difficult decisions, particularly in London.

In that context, we are striking a new balance in our investments. Adapting where evidence tells us that audiences are very well served or changing how they like to experience music, or by reducing funding where organisations have suggested undertaking similar activities, in order to prioritise within the limitations of the resource we had available. To take our investment in opera as an example, compared to other forms of music we have seen almost no growth in audience demand for traditionally staged ‘grand’ or large-scale opera, which is where most of our current investment in opera sits. That doesn’t mean our appetite for investing in, or ambitions for, the opera ecology of England are diminished in any way. We are confident there is appetite to enjoy opera: at different scales, reimagined in new ways, and on new stages. This means we are increasing our investment in companies like English Touring Opera and Birmingham Opera Company and inviting Pegasus Opera and Opera UpClose to join our national portfolio for the first time, and we continue to invest in National Opera Studio, British Youth Opera, in Glyndebourne and Welsh National Opera (WNO) amongst others.

With this rebalancing of funding across the music portfolio, our aim is to protect and support the future development of England’s music ecology as a whole, as well as to ensure support for a new generation of audiences and musical talent. In cash terms, despite reductions to English National Opera, Welsh National Opera and Glyndebourne, opera will still receive £30 million a year from the Arts Council - over 40% of our total investment in music. As part of our £65 million overall annual investment in music, we will also be increasing the amount we spend on classical music. Stated baldly, as cold hard cash, that represents an enormous commitment within our music portfolio.

A new future for English National Opera?

There has been a lot of attention, understandably, on the impact of our decisions on English National Opera (ENO). Where do they fit in to our strategy? Reports that the Arts Council is expecting English National Opera to pick itself up, move lock, stock and barrel to Manchester and be up and running there within only a few months are wide of the mark. We have been clear about our offer: at this stage, we are offering ENO the opportunity of a year’s funding (more than £1 million a month until October next year). This will help to support their remodelling, and their thinking about relocation outside London and the role the Coliseum may play in their future.

We also hope to work with them to reimagine how they can most effectively design a reinvigorated national operatic offer for England, and to support them in doing this we additionally offered them a further cash investment of £5 million a year for the following two years. As with every other arts organisation in the country, they will also have the opportunity to apply for entry to the next National Portfolio in 2026. Manchester, with all its brilliant infrastructure and its adventurous audiences, could be an option for their new base, but ultimately this will be a decision for ENO, and we will support them in their decision making.

The ENO has a fantastic leadership team, and we are keen to see how they can bring their ambitious and inclusive approach to reimagining their offer. We believe it should be different from a traditional grand opera company, complementing what is already available across England and building on the flair, innovation and inclusivity that it has displayed in all aspects of its work over recent years. We stand by, ready to work with ENO and to invest in their future outside the capital, acknowledging that they may continue to put on some of their productions at the Coliseum.

The wider music portfolio

We’ve given a lot of thought to each and every one of our artforms and disciplines, and every single one of the sub-elements of them. For me, as Director of Music, that’s involved talking to musicians at all stages of their lives, attending concerts and online events and – not least during the Covid-19 lockdowns – working closely with the sector to support as many different kinds of organisations as possible to survive and even thrive in the most difficult of circumstances.

Building on that strong foundation, the decisions we have made are also influenced by what we learned through some of the more detailed studies we’ve undertaken in recent years, for example our reports into Fairness and Inclusivity in Classical Music and South Asian Dance and Music which included recommendations to improve access to these fields. Each has told its own story about the current state of elements of the Music portfolio and the potential for change within it.

Each element of the Music portfolio deserves fair consideration for our investment. These include opera companies and orchestras, venues and other organisations that develop, promote and showcase the work of individual musicians and creators and smaller musical groups. We want to support the development of the widest possible range of music genres, contemporary and traditional work.

Every organisation joining our portfolio, whether new or returning, has its own distinctive identity, mission and purpose. Together the new portfolio will provide an extraordinary range of activity for artists, participants and audiences alike, and will help us to deliver the vision of Let’s Create. Underpinned by public investment, these organisations will bring their work to greater public attention and provide more opportunities for communities and the talented people within them. We also believe we’ll see innovation in the work they do, leading to ambitious new ways of presenting music on local, national and international stages.

Who are our new joiners?

As well as continuing to support many well-loved music organisations, there are many wonderful stories to tell about the 44 new additions to our portfolio from next year. Like the inclusion of Awards for Young Musicians, who identify and nurture young people from low-income families with potential and help them to achieve their musical goals. Another new entrant is Orchestras for All, an award-winning national organisation whose fully inclusive ensembles help vulnerable young people to access life-changing musical experiences.

New organisations joining our portfolio such as the Music Managers Forum and Chineke!, and well as those we are continuing to fund like English Folk Expo, Jazz re:freshed and Britten Pears Arts will help artists, groups and ensembles thrive on a global stage. We also welcome the opportunity to invest more in organisations such as the ParaOrchestra and Brass Bands England, and to see the National Children’s Orchestra join the portfolio. The list is extensive, with 139 organisations making up the music portfolio overall.

Music remains at the core of the Arts Council’s commitment to investing in creativity and culture, as it has done for decades. But this music portfolio is more eclectic than ever before, with classical, jazz, global, folk, brass bands and pop sitting shoulder to shoulder. Thousands of ensembles, musicians, composers, creators, and audiences across the country are set to benefit from the support that regular funding through the portfolio provides. We are also pleased to have worked closely with the Government, including supporting the National Plan for Music Education, so that more children and young people can access opportunities to take part, enjoy and – if they wish – progress towards careers in music, and we are excited to be involved in the upcoming Cultural Education Plan. Having music in your life, has so many positive benefits and it’s important we all get to experience that from an early age.

No Arts Council Director of Music can ever feel that their job is done. There will always be more potential than can be met through the available funding. Music is an artform that constantly evolves. It is shaped and influenced by the external environment, providing a crucible for reimagination which at the same time can challenge, change and inspire us. I’ve always believed that music has the power to transform, and am proud that the range, depth, and variety of this new national portfolio will help many more people from many more backgrounds experience that transformative energy.