Robbie JackThe English National Opera is to lose its £12.6m core annual funding from Arts Council England in a major shake-up that leaves its future uncertain.
Instead, the prestigious company will get £17m over three years to “develop a new business model”, with a suggestion it moves from London to Manchester.
It is part of the biggest overhaul of English arts funding for years, with millions moved outside central London.
Others to have lost their entire grants include the Donmar Warehouse theatre.
Public money from the government, as well as from the National Lottery, is used by Arts Council England to support arts and culture across the nation.
The ENO is one of the UK’s leading opera companies and is currently based at the historic London Coliseum. Its annual Arts Council grant equates to more than double the box office income it earned in the year before Covid.
Arts Council England chair Sir Nick Serota said there were “opportunities that exists for English National Opera to become a different kind of company working across the country”.
He added: “They are capable of responding, in our view. They’ve got great leadership. They have great achievement, and there seems to us to be an opportunity here that we should grasp.”
As part of Friday’s funding announcement, more money will be handed out to organisations outside the capital and in outer London boroughs.
The Shakespeare North Theatre in Prescot, Blackpool’s illuminations and libraries in Barnsley, Warwickshire and East Yorkshire will all get cash for the first time.
It comes after former Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries instructed the Arts Council to redress a “huge historic imbalance” in cultural funding.
What has been announced is the most dramatic shift in funding for the arts I can remember. Many will see it as long overdue.
We’ve known for some time that the money spent per head in London on culture is much higher than outside.
The Arts Council would say its decisions have been driven by its greater understanding of what people want from culture. Its own research shows that the demand is for art and culture to be much more local. People want it on their high streets.
But what’s been announced today ties in clearly with the government’s “levelling up” strategy. Nadine Dorries made it plain she wanted more money moved from London.
One fifth of the cash that used to go to institutions in the capital will be shifted elsewhere by 2026. That can’t come without an obvious cost for the likes of the National Theatre, the Southbank Centre and other renowned centres of culture.
I interviewed Rufus Norris, who runs the National Theatre, at the start of this year and he talked about plans to move money out of the capital as being like “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
As for the ENO and the talk that it might move to Manchester – the Arts Council is offering it transition financing to help find it a future. But we do not know whether it will take up that offer, and whether there is even room for it there.
Next year The Factory opens, which is Manchester’s big shiny new £210m cultural venue. Some are already asking whether there is the audience to sustain that, let alone a new opera company.
The ENO said the announcement “marks the start of a new chapter” and “will allow us to increase our national presence by creating a new base out of London, potentially in Manchester”.
The company said it plans to continue to manage the Coliseum, “using it to present a range of opera and dance whilst maximising it as a commercial asset”.
It added: “The ENO has vision and purpose and we aim to support the levelling up agenda by reimagining opera for future generations across England.”
