Arts cuts: all change — or is it?

Three years ago it was hardly imaginable that Regularly Funded Organisation (RFO) status would be abandoned. Being an RFO did three things: it guaranteed a fixed level of funding from Arts Council England for three years, enabling organisations to plan ahead; it gave a level of security, since the Arts Council rarely disinvested from RFOs; and it gave a real status that could be used to leverage other funding and opportunities. Within the arts world, being an RFO was considered significantly better than simply being project-funded, both in practical financial terms and as a recognition of worth.

This is now changing — or is it? The new structure will be built around the concept of a National Portfolio of supported organisations. For perhaps the first time, the spread of funding and arts provision across the country will be assessed in its entirety. Decisions will be based on the quality of the work proposed, how it meets the Arts Council's priorities, and the organisation's ability to deliver. A second stage will involve a judgement about how well an organisation fits into a 'balanced portfolio' — looking at organisational size, type, artform, geographical spread and diversity.

This means Arts Council England will attempt to create a country-wide arts infrastructure that reflects what a healthy arts ecology should look like. Larger organisations have less cause for anxiety about the outcome; for smaller ones, this will be a genuinely uncertain time, prompting conversations about partnerships or even mergers.

The concept of 'balance' is not uncontested. ACE has previously attempted to quantify ideal levels of arts provision by local population, an approach since considered limited. Theories of cultural regeneration have focused on 'hot spots' (areas of high provision and engagement, such as London or Brighton) and 'cold spots' (areas where ACE has attempted to stimulate activity, such as Turner Contemporary in Margate). Better and more applications to the National Portfolio will naturally come from hot spots — achieving genuine national balance is no easy task.

A central question going forward is sustainability — or as it is now termed, resilience. ACE needs to fund a balanced portfolio not just in this first round but into the future. There is a real risk that the desire for stability will lead to stagnation, replicating the closed-shop tendency of the old RFO system, where entry was difficult and departure rare. One of the aims of the National Portfolio is to shake that up — how far it succeeds will not be known until decisions are announced on 30 March.