Silent, Or Silenced?

A Freedom of Information request from VAN Magazine has revealed that Sir Nicholas Serota, the chair of Arts Council England, threatened to review a £3.2 million grant given to Welsh National Opera after the company’s music director wrote an open letter about the impact of Arts Council cuts on the organization.

The letter, written by music director Tomáš Hanus and signed by leading figures in Welsh music such as Bryn Terfel, David Poutney, Judith Weir, and former WNO music director Carlo Rizzi, was published on the company’s website on March 1. Hanus criticized Arts Council England’s move to cut WNO’s NPO budget by 35% in 2022. This was part of ACE’s broader program of cuts and funding reallocations across the UK arts scene, but was one of a number of decisions which contrasted with the stated goal of moving more arts funding outside of London, and a decision which was taken largely without communicating with other key stakeholders. 

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“The decision to cut at such a significant level without consultation appears disrespectful and reckless,” Hanus wrote. “We understand that the Arts Council of England is undertaking a review of opera in the UK,” he added, “and we hope that this letter will be considered as an important contribution to this process.” 

On March 11, Serota emailed WNO’s interim general director Christopher Barron, who was not among the signatories of the open letter. (Barron told VAN in a statement that “whilst it would not have been appropriate for our Board Members or Senior Leadership Team to sign this letter given our continuing working relationship with Arts Council England, we were encouraged that it received such widespread support – not just for WNO, but more widely for the UK opera sector.”)

“The timing, nature and content of [Hanus’s] letter are causing me and colleagues at Arts Council England significant concern,” Serota wrote.  

Serota’s main concern was that, following the 2022 cuts, WNO had signed up for ACE’s Transform funding, a pot of money designed to help arts organizations experiencing funding cuts to adapt to smaller annual ACE grants. (ACE guidelines list general operating costs, as well as restructuring costs—consultants’ fees, investment in new technology, and redundancy packages—as examples of the areas that Transform funding covers.) But Serota suggested that Hanus’s letter was evidence that WNO was “committed to a rather different course of action” which involved lobbying for a reinstatement of their previous NPO grant. “If this is WNO’s preferred course of action, then the company’s commitment to meeting the terms of its Transform grant and undertaking the significant journey of business change appears to be in doubt,” Serota wrote. “If that is the case,” he added, “we would have to review the £3.2 million Transform grant.” (Serota also recognized “the significant stress this reduction in funding puts on the company at all levels.”) 

To underline his argument, Serota wrote that “Tomas’ letter — and the fact that it clearly has the support of the wider leadership and Chair of the company – suggests WNO is committed to a rather different course of action to lobby publicly for the reinstatement of its ACE NPO grant to 2018-23 levels.” But although the WNO music director’s wide-ranging letter described the many ways in which the cuts made their work more challenging, and how they had a knock-on impact on the UK’s music ecology, it stopped short of calling for a reinstatement of the previous NPO grant. (In many ways, Hanus’ letter—which is short on statistical data, and vague on its demands for action—would have been more powerful if it had outlined exactly how the situation should be changed.)

Additionally, Serota said that what he interpreted as Hanus’s aim—to “publicly lobby for reinstatement”—“clearly has the support of the wider leadership and Chair of the company.” From the outside, however, this assertion is far from clear. Though Hanus’ letter was published on the WNO website, and appears to have been forwarded to Serota by Barron, the board and chair were ultimately absent from the list of signatories. If there has been lobbying for the reinstatement of previous funding levels from management and the board, it certainly hasn’t been made public. WNO’s executives have also been absent from the very public campaign for WNO’s survival, meaning the majority of the protesting for a full-time future for the company has been left to external advocates: trade unions like Equity and the Musicians’ Union, or campaigning musicians like the soprano Elizabeth Atherton.

Later in the email, Serota wrote that he would be happy to meet Hanus and Barron, as long as the meeting was “not to seek any changes to WNO’s funding” from ACE. Serota added that he hoped Hanus and Barron “would want to use such a meeting to confirm that you remain committed to the terms and purposes previously agreed in relation to the Transform grant and that your Chair will then be prepared to re-confirm this agreement in writing.”

Serota’s letter may establish a chilling effect on the WNO’s future advocacy for its funding, and impact how other similar arts organizations approach their own relationships with ACE. The chair of WNO’s main funding body threatened in writing to review millions of pounds of WNO grants, an action prompted by a critical yet ultimately detail-light letter. Serota’s response shows how any lobbying for an organization’s survival as a full-time company—even in the most general terms—could also be interpreted as in contravention of ACE’s Transform agreements. (Clearly, Serota’s plan worked. Since the Hanus letter, and despite the company’s musicians facing cuts to hours and potential redundancies due to their reduced schedules, WNO’s executives have been reluctant to throw their weight behind any of the many public protests, or speak out alongside the numerous celebrities who have come out in support of the company.)

Sir Nicholas Serota CH, 78, is one of the art world’s most powerful figures. A director of the Tate galleries from 1988 to 2017, Serota was named the most influential person in art in the Art Review annual Power 100 poll in 2014, and, in his time overseeing the Tate Modern, he was widely credited as the man responsible for changing British attitudes towards modern art. Alongside his Arts Council role, which he began in 2017, Serota is also senior independent director on the BBC board, responsible for “upholding and protecting the independence” of the corporation and ensuring that the BBC “maintains the highest standards of corporate governance, particularly with respect to … internal control and risk management.”

When approached by VAN, both Serota and Arts Council England declined to comment due to the pre-election purdah period. Hanus did not respond to requests made through his management for comment.

In a statement made to VAN, Barron said that WNO was “pleased to have been awarded Stage 2 Transform Funding which acknowledges our commitment to change, and which we are now progressing,” adding that “we are – and always have been – committed to our relationship with ACE to secure the future of Wales’s national opera company.” ¶