Dreams and jobs slowly fade away as Bristol bears brunt of arts cuts

‘We’re at our fourth year of losses’: Charlotte Geeves, executive director, Bristol Old Vic. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/The Observer

“I felt like Bristol was one of the best places in the country to make theatre,” says writer and performer Amy Mason, who’s lived in Bristol for most of her life. “It was quite punk. It was this very well organised, inclusive and active system of getting work on stage. People could make a living out of theatre.”

Mason left school at 16 and worked in retail, but a community theatre project not far from the colourful house we’re sitting in on the edge of the city offered her the chance to attend a playwright workshop and put on a small show. “They liked it, they gave me a commission, I was like: Oh my God, I could be a writer!” From there, she started writing short stories, went on to stage three shows with Bristol Old Vic, and has grown a career as a TV writer and standup comedian.

Now, says Mason, the arts in Bristol have “gone backwards”. There are fewer places to test new work, fewer venues to stage small projects, less cash going directly to artists, and that’s all made it harder for individuals to get arts council funding, she says. “How can it be anything other than a hobby?”

Data gathered by performing arts union Equity from the UK’s arts councils suggests that there has been a downward trend in real-terms arts funding across the UK, with a 16% fall between 2017 and 2022.

Bristol Central, the constituency where Labour’s shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire is running for office this week, experienced an average annual funding cut of 61% over the same period.

It shows “pretty damning results in terms of where austerity has left us,” says Equity general secretary Paul Fleming, who is calling for the next government to raise arts funding to 0.5% of GDP and bring in “a serious industrial plan for the sector”.

Meanwhile, Bristol city council (BCC) announced significant cuts to its culture budget last year, with 15 organisations losing funding completely.

Watershed, a cultural organisation housed in a Victorian goods shed on Bristol’s Harbourside, is one of the unlucky few. “We’d already cut ourselves to shreds, it wasn’t like there was loads of fat in the system,” says Clare Reddington, Watershed’s CEO, who has worked here in various roles for two decades.

About 19% of Watershed’s income comes from arts funding – BCC, Arts Council England (ACE) and BFI. That money is “really important”, says Reddington, allowing Watershed to implement access and inclusion measures, offer cheap tickets for young people, and take artistic risks. It also runs Pervasive Media Studio, a free workspace for artists. With real-terms cuts and council funding disappearing, these things become tougher.

“If you try to build ambitious new things and then the funding runs out, the community, skills and experience you’ve brought together start to drift away,” Reddington says. “For us, the challenge is: we would rather be making art, supporting artists, engaging with communities. But what we’re doing is thinking about profit and fundraising.”

Across the water, the Bristol Old Vic, the city’s main producing theatre, is facing similar issues. Charlotte Geeves, executive director here since 2019, says they’ve suffered real-terms funding cuts from ACE. Their £1.25m allocation has been frozen since 2012 – if it had kept pace with inflation, it would be £1.742m, she says. “That would mean we wouldn’t be running at a loss. We’re at our fourth year of losses. Then you layer on top of that, local authority funding cuts from central government.”

Bristol Old Vic has also had its council funding cut completely. Geeves says the organisation is “doing more with less”, expanding its outreach work with schools, which she sees as a crucial counterpoint to arts education cuts, and doing longer runs of fewer individual shows. “If we continue being in a loss-making position, that will impact the shows we can do, but also the activity we can do across the whole city. That is a real concern.”

Lynda Rooke, president of Equity and a working actor, lives in Bristol. “I know writers in Bristol who worked with local theatre companies, small and large, who are feeling commissioning has just disappeared,” she says. “This is about longevity and there’s a real struggle once you’re not sure exactly what your income is going to be.”

Rooke, Mason and Reddington say they know cultural workers in Bristol who are now struggling to earn a living or considering leaving the industry. Watershed’s annual survey of its artist community found that last year, annual turnover was down an average of £11.5k per person. “That’s because the money has just stopped moving in the system,” Reddington says.

Everyone is concerned about what this means for the future of Bristol’s arts scene, and the next generation of artists. “We’re not going to hear different voices because the opportunities just aren’t there,” Mason says. “If you can’t work with theatres and arts organisations in your city, you have no options to make a career.”

By this time next week, if Debbonaire triumphs over Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer, the city could be represented by the new culture secretary. The idea inspires some hope. “The fact that Thangam is an artist herself who is passionate about and understands the sector would be amazing,” Geeves says. Debbonaire is a former professional cellist and is married to an opera singer and actor.

“One of the real struggles is the number of culture ministers – in 14 years, there have been 12. And some came in not knowing about culture,” Rooke adds. “Thangam has that absolute link to culture.” Yet she has “been frank”, Rooke says, about the lack of money.

Reddington hopes for a restoration of arm’s-length governance for arts councils: “there’s been so much meddling that has been really bad for the sector.” She also hopes for a holistic approach to funding, looking at Bristol as a whole, rather than on a project-by-project basis. “I doubt it’s going to flow very quickly. But I do think more money needs to flow to art and culture with an understanding of the ripple effect. It creates wealth, opportunity, social cohesion.”

Equity is asking the next culture secretary to make sure workers are supported to stay in the arts. Mason agrees: “I’d love to see more money go directly to artists rather than to the national portfolio organisations because it does not always trickle down. Access to culture changes people’s lives.”