Your report “Housing fund favours London and the south, Labour claims” March 6) is correct to point out the arts funding imbalance between London and the rest of the country. However, it doesn’t acknowledge that the report from Onward talks about “clear evidence” of a rebalancing taking place. Today, around two-thirds of Arts Council funding is invested outside London.
Distributing funding more evenly across the country, into museums, arts organisations and libraries, is a priority for Arts Council England. Our newly published strategy commits us to ensuring that everyone in England has the chance to access culture and creativity, no matter where they live. We especially want to focus on specific places where there is less engagement with publicly funded culture and will invest more in those places over the next decade.
We have already started to do this with programmes such as Creative People and Places, which has reached 3m people in places such as Sunderland, Stoke, Barking and Bolsover. People in towns and villages deserve a fair chance to experience great culture and take part in high quality creative activities.
London is an international creative and cultural powerhouse. It provides a home to a host of successful creative and cultural businesses and its landmark cultural institutions contribute to our international reputation. It is vital that as we increase investment elsewhere that we don’t harm the capital’s vibrant creative economy.
So there is still more rebalancing to be done, and we look forward to working with government and other partners in order that significant and sustained public investment in culture can be directed to ensure every person in this country has access to high quality culture and to support the innovation and talent that underpins our thriving creative industries.
Darren Henley
CEO, Arts Council England
