Summary of headline findings from What Next? Roundtables on Hodge Review of ACE

23 July 2025

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Headline findings from What Next? Roundtables on Hodge Review of ACE

June 2025 EC and CT

About this document

Arts Council England is currently under independent review by Baroness Hodge, supported by an expert panel and a civil service team: https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/artscouncil-england-review

These opinions and statements about the current and future remit and processes of Arts Council England were all made at What Next? Roundtables with the Hodge Review team.

We have created an anonymised summary of these experiences and recommendations to share with anyone creating a response or involved with the process. We have submitted this to the formal consultation and sent to the panel. This document represents a reflection of the discussions that took place and should not be taken as the views of the What Next? team or the movement as a whole. The recommendations made by colleagues have not been evaluated or tested by What Next?.

Please contact Lizzie Crump, Co-Director at What Next? if you would like to discuss any of this further: lizzie@whatnextculture.org.uk.

Strategy and governance

  • Arts Council England’s Royal Charter needs further clarification and updating for the current climate and cultural ecosystem. It is not well understood.
  • The arms-length principle is critical. Arts Council England (ACE) must be independent and must be given the power, agency and constitution to hold the government and its agents to account. It must be able to represent artists and the sector within policy and to the government in ways that are entirely separate from its negotiation of a funding settlementand its role as a grant-making organisation.
  • ACE must create ways for artists (and not just organisations) to be a part of its governance and processes – particularly its funding decisions and programmes. This consultation and engagement must be ongoing, embedded, real, tangible and meaningful. ACE must recognise that there are financial barriers to individuals and freelancers to taking part in processes and panels. ACE’s current policies of paying freelancers for their time are noted and praised.
  • DWP’s own statistics show that over 24% of the population are classed as disabled. 24% of ACE’s funding must therefore be benefiting and supporting D/deaf and disabled people: as artists, audiences and participants.

Purpose and values

  • ACE should fund the arts and culture and artists. It must fund radical ideas. It must become more comfortable with taking creative risk. It should work to centre the arts, culture and creativity within our society.
  • The ACE of the future must respond to and be shaped by the big issues facing society, these include; freedom of expression for artists, climate justice and the rise of AI and technology. It must be a robust champion for freedom of expression. It must embed climate justice within its criteria and consideration.
  • ACE must have a role to champion UK artists to and in the rest of the world. It must have a development function to proactively build global bridges and opportunities in other countries (including Devolved Nations).
  • At a time when Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are under threat, ACE must be a visible champion for these values and the systems that support and embed them within the arts and culture and in its own processes.
  • It is essential that ACE supports d/Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse people to take their place within the cultural and creative workforce: contributing to wider government priorities around growth and employment. Much more should be done to invest in capacity and leadership at all levels.
  • Work with, for and by communities is professional arts and cultural activity. It is of equal status and importance to other arts and cultural forms. There should be no false distinction made between excellence and participation. All forms of funded arts and culture should be high-quality, and only viewed as excellent when they are inclusive, representative and accessible.
  • ACE’s role as a development agency is not well understood, and is not clearly defined. It was unclear to colleagues where strategic intervention by ACE crosses-over with direct delivery. Some organisations felt that, as NPOs, they were in direct competition with ACE for the delivery of projects and/or research.
  • d/Deaf and Disabled and diverse leadership and employment should not be restricted to companies whose focus is delivering work and advocacy for disabled people. ACE’s development agency role should directly address this.
  • ACE’s commitment to the Social Model of Disability was noted and celebrated. ACE should have a strong role in promoting and embedding this across the arts, cultural and creative sectors.
  • Work made by/for and with d/Deaf and disabled and neurodiverse artists in England is world-leading. More should be done to promote this work and practice, and recognise its place on a global stage. There are a number of specific barriers to touring and working internationally; from EU regulations on care procurement, to a lack of understanding from Access to Work as to the support needed for d/Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse artists and leaders to travel. ACE should have a leadership role in championing artists and resolving these issues.

Systems and processes

  • The current funding ecology (philanthropy, sponsorship, public sector, commercial, ticket sales etc) is not working. Sold-out shows often do not break even. In the future, ACE must create new systems and criteria that reflect, take into account and understand this.
  • There is not enough money in the system. Many organisations have been on standstillfunding for over a decade and are expected to keep delivering more and new activity. ACE must make clearer its commitment to supporting innovation and growth in this system, and to supporting new work, companies and individuals, alongside protecting ‘crown-jewels’. There must be a system which enables companies and artists to grow.
  • The Arts Council needs a frame and language for its work, funding and processes that works for artists and the sector, and a second set of frames and languages that help the sector to connect better with communities, commercial partners, other parts of the public sector and people who do not currently think that culture is for them. These two languages are not the same and often lead to confusion.
  • ACE’s processes are overly onerous and are inaccessible – particularly to individuals and to small and medium-sized organisations. Decision-making must be made more transparent across all systems.
  • ACE’s workforce is over-capacity: colleagues spend all their time battling with administrative systems and assessments and so do not have capacity to invest in the relationships that are core to the delivery of its development agency function.
  • ACE must ensure lived-experience of discrimination and disability and expertise is embedded in every layer of its workforce. Better understanding of reasonable adjustments and of cutting-edge practice must be embedded in the whole workforce through regular mandatory training and knowledge-sharing.
  • ACE has recently announced that it will change the way that it supports networks, brokerage and support organisations (formally called IPSOs). More clarity and transparency as to the development and strategic value of these organisations is needed. These organisations do not directly deliver or create art, but support the health and ecology of the sector.
  • Currently, ACE spends a substantial amount per year on Access Support for individuals and organisations applying for funding. This is welcome and currently essential – but much of this funding could be redistributed to directly supporting the artistic work of the d/Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse community if the application processes themselves were redesigned to be accessible to everyone.
  • No artistic work should be deemed excellent if it is inaccessible. ACE should have a remit to hold organisations to account against the Equality Act and to actively promote best access and inclusion practices within its processes. Many grant-funded projects and NPOs do not adhere to equality legislation.
  • Market failure issues for freelancers are pervasive across the whole of the arts, cultural and creative industries; with multiple barriers to fair and equitable working practices in place. For the d/Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse workforce these are compounded by the failure of welfare systems such as Access to Work (AtW) – endemic delays and hostile processes mean that these systems regularly impede colleagues from taking their place within the cultural and creative workforce. ACE should have a leadership role in advocating for change for the sector.

Children and young people, skills and the wider public sector

  • Children and young people from their earliest years and their families are a significant part of the population and are an important audience. High-quality provision for them must be a part of ACE’s remit. However, ACE should not be attempting to address failures in the wider education system (such as curriculum emphasis and school accountability), it should be focussing on the work of artists and organisations and the contribution they make to children’s creative and cultural lives.
  • The current systemic underfunding of the public sector is making it difficult for ACE to clearly stick to the principle of additionality. ACE should not attempt to fill gaps in other areas of public-sector funding (e.g. health, local authorities, education) because it is not resourced to do so. Partners in these sectors no longer bring the levels of match-funding that they offered a decade ago, meaning that ACEs overall approach to partnership and match-funding must be overhauled to avoid mission-creep, and to remain effective in reaching audiences and communities.
  • Skills and a talent pipeline for individuals – freelance and young people – are a critical issue for the sector. Freelancers are currently experiencing market failure- where paid jobs andopportunities are not in supply to meet demand. ACE should supply leadership in research and development of new models.

Local communities and devolution

  • There needs to be better, more transparent and more equitable systems in place for ACE to include local decision-making and to work closely with local authorities within its processes. Influence and strategic thinking can be devolved, without necessarily devolving cash.
  • There needs to be an excellent cultural offer for all in every community – with disparities between urban and rural, towns and cities, north and south, and London and other regions, all clearly articulated.
  • There were mixed feelings around the concept of devolving ACE funding directly to local or strategic authorities. For some colleagues, this would facilitate more local decision-making and expertise in arts and cultural grant-making, whilst for others there are significant concerns:
  1. the need for central understanding of the national picture
  2. equity of opportunity for everyone in the country
  3. a rise in duplication, administration and bureaucracy for those working across different geographic areas – with particular concern for touring,
  4. the safeguarding of the arms-length principle against party political agendas.
  • There are serious concerns that devolution of funds to multiple local areas would mean an unmanageable increase in administration, and a decrease in accessible practices and support; meaning that less arts and cultural funding would be allocated to the D/deaf and disabled community. A place-based model of funding also does not work for communities that are not defined by geography: eg. the d/Deaf and disabled community.

 

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