City theatre and gallery given extension to council funding
Six-figure sums for attractions approved for another year
A councillor was reduced to tears during a discussion about the Chichester Festival Theatre, saying the industry had been ‘destroyed overnight’.
Sarah Lishman (Lab, Chichester East) spoke up during a district council meeting while members debated whether to extend by one year its grants to both the theatre and Pallant House Gallery.
Fighting to regain her composure, Mrs Lishman said: “The arts are so important to so many people.
“I used to be a stage manager, I used to be a lighting technician and seeing the industry destroyed overnight and so many people left behind is so hard to take.
“So many of my friends and my family are struggling.”
The grants – £187,500 for the theatre and £130,000 for the gallery – were due to be reviewed in March 2022 but, due to the impact of the pandemic, the council agreed to follow the lead of Arts
Council England, and extend them to March 31, 2023.
Many councillors supported the recommendation to extend the grants, calling the theatre and gallery ‘treasures’, listing the community work carried out by both and stressing the economic and social benefits they brought to Chichester.
Roy Briscoe, cabinet member for community services and culture, told the meeting during a normal year the gallery generated around £3.7million for the district while, for the theatre, the figure was around £23.5million.
He added: “Securing funding for an additional year will enable the theatre and gallery to continue to support the local economy and extend the work they do with the community and targeted groups for the long recovery from the lockdowns as a result of Covid-19.”
Janet Duncton (Con, Loxwood) said it would be ‘foolish’ not to extend the grants and David Rodgers (Lib Dem, Harbour Villages) said: “We should not be parochial in our treasures. We should support them.
“They are Chichester’s gift to the world and they help to put us and our city on the map.”
Some, though, had concerns about the perceived special treatment offered to the theatre and gallery when compared to other sites and attractions in the city.
Simon Oakley (North Mundham and Tangmere) said he had ‘considerable reservations’, adding: “Given all of the visitor economy is subject to the effects of Covid, it does not seem appropriate to continue to treat these entities so differently to all the other independent visitor economy sites and attractions.”
Mr Oakley also raised concerns about the amount of money spent on senior posts at the theatre over the past decade and suggested the council needed to take a closer look at the situation.
He added: “This council needs to balance its desire to be a patron of the arts using other people’s money with all its other commitments, risks and expanding policy priorities such as climate change.”
He was supported by Christopher Page (Ind, North
Mundham and Tangmere).
He said: “It’s all very well for white, middle class people to get together and dispose of other people’s money but we have to look at what the opportunity costs of those donations are when they could be used for other things we need to spend money on.”
Given the ‘unusual and difficult times’ in which we are living, leader Eileen Lintill said it would be ‘very wrong’ to pull the plug on funding for the venues.
But she agreed the council should take an in-depth look into the situation when the next round of funding was considered.