Newcastle city council proposes 100% cuts to arts venues

Newcastle’s major arts venues, including the Theatre Royal and Northern Stage, are bracing themselves for a 100% cut in funding from the city council.

The council is having to save £90m over three years, meaning it will axe 1,300 jobs as it goes through what it terms a “radical restructure”.

Leader of Newcastle City Council Nick Forbes said: “This is one of the darkest days for public service in Newcastle. Cutting services is not what I went into politics to do. The cut in Government grant is grossly unfair – at a time when more and more families are turning to us for help. Financially, this has put us in an impossible position from which there is no escape.”

As well as Northern Stage and the Theatre Royal, the council is also proposing to withdraw funding from new writing venue Live Theatre, children’s literature centre Seven Stories, Globe Gallery, Tyneside Cinema and the Great North Museum. Ten libraries are also set to close.

The Theatre Royal, which recently reopened following a £5million refurbishment, will lose more than £600,000 per year, which equates to roughly 6.5% of its turnover.

The venue’s chief executive Philip Bernays told the BBC: “On the one hand, it doesn’t sound like an enormous proportion, but £600,000 is one hell of a lot of money to have whipped out of the organisation. The council is between a rock and a hard place and we all recognise that.”

“Newcastle has rebuilt itself on a cultural renaissance over the past 15 or 20 years. It’s reinvented itself as a city following the heavy industrial decline, and to throw all that away overnight is madness. Which just shows what an incredible decision the council are facing at the moment because they know it’s madness.”

At last week’s regional theatre summit at the National Theatre, Northern Stage’s Erica Whyman cited the Angel of the North and Sage Gateshead as examples of Newcastle’s cultural makeover. “Modest but sustained investment in culture allows a region to think
completely differently about itself,” she said, adding that “for every pound
that is spent on our buildings, four goes back into the local economy.”

A statement on arts in the city council’s proposals for 2013-16 reads: “The city benefits from vibrant and popular cultural institutions, but given the scale of government cuts it will not be possible for us to play as significant a role in their funding in the future.”