Arts Council cuts

[durham_rambler]

The Guardian has published an illuminating map showing where the organisations are whose funding has been cut. (The Simon Rogers whose name appears as the contributor is actually shewhomust's cousin's son.) Lowlights in our region are:

• Flambard Press, a client who have a 7½% cut to £20k next year then nothing in 2012/13. This for a press that has just published Brian Aldiss's poetry and a few years back published Blood Waters by desperance . New Writing North, who share the same building, get a 64% rise which gives them another £125k -- six times as much as Flambard is losing. 
• Side Gallery, again a 7½% cut next year to £58k and nothing after that. A post on their website calls it a " profoundly stupid, culturally illiterate and illogical decision." It seems that their collective structure did not go down well with the suits, though it has stood the test of time since its birth in (honestly) May 68.
• The Theatre Royal Newcastle. Again the 7½% cut to £44k and nothing afterwards. I know little about the Theatre Royal, but I note that the Gala Theatre in Durham, whose director Simon Stallworthy stormed out because he could not work with the County Council, gets £200k, one of the newly funded bodies.
• North Tyneside Council lose £46k - they have been quite good to Cloud Nine Theatre Company and to Peter Mortimer, and that's going to be more difficult.

Side Gallery are quoting extensively, and scathingly, from the assessment they received. No doubt the other bodies have received theirs but haven't fully digested them yet. Expect to see a lot of come-back in the next few days.