England's arts budget will take a 30% cut as a result of today's comprehensive spending review – a slashing that will be seen as deeply damaging to the cultural landscape, including theatres, festivals, the performing arts, venues, orchestras, and regional and local galleries.
Arts Council England (ACE) will face an overall cut of 30%, and the government is asking it to pass on cuts of only 15% to "front line" arts organisations. Aside from cutting its own overheads, that will mean stopping funding to a number of arts advocacy and development programmes such as the educational programme Creative Partnerships. It will also hit work including Cultural Olympiad projects.
The 15% cut to the arts "front line" – broadly defined as its portfolio of regularly funded organisations – means that, according to the chief executive of ACE, Alan Davey, at least 100 arts organisations will lose their funding.
ACE will be asked to reduce its own operating costs by 50%, having already completed an organisational review in the past 18 months that saw it cutting its costs by 21%
Its annual budget will be cut, in real terms, from £449.5m in the current financial year to £349m by 2014.
The total budget for the Department of Media, Culture and Sport is to be reduced by 24% from £1.4bn to £1.1bn by 2014/2015.
National museums will be relatively protected, taking a cut of around 15%, which, while deep, is designed to protect their free entry policy. Retaining free entry was a Conservative election promise.
Cuts to arts organisations will start to hit next April. Details of the first year's cuts to individual organisations will be announced next week, but ACE is expected to pass on an immediate flat-rate cut of about 10% to its regularly funded organisations, with a few "non-front line" organisations having their funding withdrawn immediately.
Following that, ACE will announce a new funding structure, with all its "regularly funded organisations" asked to reapply for funding with new and tighter criteria.
It has already been announced that the Lottery will be returned to its original "good causes" by 2012, with an estimated extra £50m per year each for the arts and heritage.