Arts Council Cuts and actors demos

The Arts Council sent out letters shortly before Christmas announcing large and sometimes even complete cuts to about 187 arts organisations including a complete cut for the newly refurbished Exeter Northcott, the Bush, The Orange Tree, The scarborough Student Drama Festival, The London Bubble, Eastern Angles, Compass, The Drill Hall, Queer Up North... the list goes on endlessly. These are just the names I know and that spring to mind.

There was unusual and perhaps unprecidented uproar in the arts community. At a meeting organised by Equity (the actors union) at the Young Vic Theatre with Peter Hewitt, then head of the Arts Council the great and the good got up and made angry speeches and the meeting ended in a vote of no confidence in the arts council.

I wasn't able to go to that meeting, but did attend a masked demonstration about how the cuts had been implemented, so suddenly, sometimes relying on incorrect information, without enough time to appeal and without the reason for the cuts being openly available to the organisations that had been cut.

The idea of this demo was that we would all stand, stock-still and slient for 15 minutes to protest. Of course actors being actors there was quite of lot of standing still and then noticing someone they knew, whipping off the mask and cries of 'hello darling!' and moving around the crowd to find people you knew and have a chat.

The final result is that some places have been reprieved including the bush, the orange tree, and the Northcott and others have been given a year's grace- eastern angles,the student drama festival (which I went to as a student many years ago and thought was fantastic).

Anyway there we are. I am asking lots of questions about the place for arts in our society. I so love theatre, but I worry about it too. Is it more fun for us or audiences, sometimes I think, sometimes.

Here are some pictures from the demo....