Sadler’s Wells

SEVERAL arts organisations including the Barbican and Sadler’s Wells are facing funding cuts from Arts Council England (ACE) as the national creative development agency seeks to divert money away from London.

While the Barbican Centre’s ACE funding has been slashed to zero from April, the £356,000 it received from the national grant body represented just one per cent of its overall income of £35million, it said. It is in the process of applying for transitional funding.

This comes after the Barbican announced plans for a regeneration project, which will not begin work for “several years”.

“Many of the Barbican Centre’s key building systems are over 40 years old and require an urgent programme of replacement and upgrade,” it added.

Sadler’s Wells funding from the ACE fell by 3.5 per cent.

The cuts put forward by the ACE last November are part of a government “levelling up” agenda, which aims to decentralise funding from London to other cultural institutions across England.

In a new statement on their website, the ACE said the decisions were driven “by a commitment to provide a fairer spread of investment across the country”.

The arts organisation justified its funding cuts by saying it had been instructed by the government to reduce its investment in the National Portfolio in London by £24million per year.