THUMBING OVER the latest Arts Council report I found myself
thinking that anyone who wanted optimism about the future of the arts would do well not to read it and avoid being depressed. As the report remarks, in a time of financial crisis the arts tend to be brushed off as marginal activi- ties, and practically every other sentence contains remarks like The National Theatre remains a remote objective,' Many theatres have lately been shut down or demolished,' No national funds whatever exist for capital expenditure on the arts. . . .' No wonder the title of the report is Art in the Red. In fact, the only really cheerful item in it is the account of Coventry's new theatre. I have often taken a pretty jaun- diced view of the activities of Coventry City Council, but they do seem to be the only munici- pal body in Britain to take as progressive a line about the arts as is done by, say, the average German municipality. It gets a little wearisome repeating that the City of Hamburg's cultural budget for a year is as much as the whole Arts Council grant, but, until something is done to remedy the situation, it is a duty to go on protest- ing. Meanwhile, much of the good work done by
the Council and related in this report will go to waste for want of funds.
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