REACTION: A critic's plea: stop all arts funding now

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11630643/A-critics-plea-stop-all-arts-funding-now.html

This article just makes my skin crawl. It is thoroughly flawed and fundamentally wrong:

Looking at this purely from a producing theatre viewpoint (the article itself completely disregards other areas of arts funding), Douglas McPherson doesn't acknowledge the breadth of Arts Council England (ACE) streams within the theatre industry, instead insinuating that arts funding is only directed at writers, who should be 'supporting themselves with day jobs as waiters or whatever, until they produce a saleable script'. To say 'I can't think of one funded show that was any good' demonstrates a lack of understanding of how theatre is produced or funded, as well as spouting contentious sweeping statements.

Most of our flagship producing theatres in the UK such as the National Theatre or the Royal Opera House, and most of our regional producing houses are heavily funded through ACE, as well as individual theatre and dance companies, site-specific projects, educational services and arts festivals.

The idea that the best art will be commercially viable is just not true. Some of the best work I've ever seen would not have been commercially viable without public funding and would not have received corporate sponsorship because such theatre is a very high-risk investment. But more to the point, the arts are not about making money, they are about enriching our culture.

There is abhorrent snobbery in his attitude towards 'subsidised theatre', as if it is somehow inferior just because of its funding structure. In fact, on the contrary - commercially-funded theatre is often subject to the pressures of influential producers, who have the capacity to stunt artistic development and intuition in the cause of financial gain should they wish to.

The statement 'Well, those living rich on state handouts would panic, wouldn't they?' is dangerously close to the anti-poor, anti-benefits rhetoric that we hear from the right-wing press and political parties. There is much more that I could have said here, but suffice to say this is not the kind of thing we need to hear right now with potentially more arts funding cuts looming, especially from someone who has been reviewing theatre for the past 20 years.