There are a few reasons why their funding might have been taken away though, irrespective of whether or not they put in a strong application – organisations that don’t have an artistic output were earmarked for cuts by this government quite early on. Also, I think there’s a feeling that there should be a competitive market for these kinds of services – that’s the rationale used for ending Arts & Business’ funding, even though the provision of both services (audience dev and private investment) are generally seen to be very important.

As well as getting money directly from ACE, AC get membership fees from (many ACE-funded) arts organisations and they charge for various services, like training and access to their big database of people interested in the arts (for mailshots and things like that). I was interested to see that AC were getting about 3-4 times the funding that the other audience dev orgs were getting.

It’s not really my place to speculate, (but…) but the membership fees, occasional project funding and the additional paid services they provide might be enough to keep them going. From what I’ve been reading today, their Yorkshire equivalent, called &Co, apparently have a decent print business to fall back on.

Ruth – thanks, that’s probably not clear to most (I forget things like that sometimes)

Actually, a couple of people have pointed out that in some cases the bare list doesn’t do a great job of the actual position – for instance, Birmingham Jazz will benefit from the Perfomances Birmingham funding, Shindig are covered by Live & Local and Bilston Craft Gallery are covered by Wolves Arts & Museums Service.