What Next? First look briefing
Headlines of Hodge Review of Arts Council England
EC 17/12/2025
Contact lizzie@whatnextculture.co.uk
In December 2024 Baroness Hodge was appointed by the government to Review Arts Council England (ACE). She undertook to consider and evaluate how well ACE operates and to make recommendations about its purpose. You can read the Terms of Reference here. She was supported in the process by a panel of sector voices, met with hundreds of arts and cultural colleagues, and received many thousands of submissions, which were analysed by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
What Next? ran two Roundtables with Baroness Hodge and her team as part of the Review process; one specifically for d/Deaf and Disabled artists and one for wider voices from the movement. You can read the summary of those discussions here.
DCMS has warmly welcomed the Review and thanked Baroness Hodge and the panel. The Government’s formal response to the paper will come in the new year.
The Review is wide-ranging and its impact will unfold over the coming weeks and months. We will update this briefing as this happens. None of the recommendations have yet been agreed, and we don’t have a timescale in place for any proposed implementation.
The first part of this briefing document gives a summary of some of the key proposals (without aiming to be comprehensive) and the second section offers some analysis and wider considerations.
The full report and set of 21 recommendations can be found here.
Summary of report and key recommendations
Headline
Arts Council England to remain, to retain and strengthen its Arms-Length Principle, and to have an improved Development Agency function to advocate for the arts. The Review calls for Let’s Create to be retired and for a new strategy to be created.
Funding
There is a clear recognition of the difficult financial landscape that ACE operates within, showing that the budget has been systematically reduced, alongside a sharp fall-off of funding from philanthropic and local authority sources. The Review acknowledges the impact of Brexit and COVID-19 on ACE and the sector and makes clear that traditional financial models for the arts are no longer fit for purpose. Hodge recommends a suite of tax reforms as part of the solution to these issues, with particular consideration given to provision for touring. It also recommends that ACE leads a joined-up approach to developing philanthropy.
New funding streams for individuals are recommended, which would support up to 500 artists a year. It is also proposed that Arts Council establishes a ’trading arm’ to allow it to offer loans, recover funding from commercial success, offer hybrid models, and act in a more entrepreneurial manner. Critically, Baroness Hodge recognises that DCMS will need to fund the practical overhaul of ACE’s systems and invest in new infrastructure to make this happen.
Baroness Hodge recommends a new funding model: organisations with a national remit will have their funding assessed by a National Panel, and everyone else will be assessed regionally by a local board. This looks to be a proposed return to a Regional Arts Boards model (in effect in the 1990s). Colleagues on panels will advise on the assessments undertaken by ACE.
The Review recommends an overhaul of all funding systems and processes, with a simplified process and set of criteria. National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) are recommended to be assessed on a rolling programme, with funding for 5 years (and a guarantee of 10 years for some to reduce administration). Hodge recommends a looser approach to criteria, and the introduction of some Key Performance Indicators – perhaps shared across to other arms-length bodies. Organisations would be encouraged to choose the most appropriate KPIs for them to deliver against, rather than demonstrating delivery against them all.
Strategy and approach
The recommendation is that the current 10 yr strategy, Let’s Create is retired and a new strategy developed.
The Hodge Review makes a distinction between the principles that underpin Let’s Create (which it applauds) and its implementation (which it says has stifled creativity and innovation). Critics says that the strategy has forced everyone to deliver against all the principles, regardless of their strengths and ambitions. They say that this has led to poor-quality education and participatory programmes crowding out legitimate provision, and a lack of prioritisation of creative and artistic ideas.
Baroness Hodge makes a distinction between ‘access’ as a form of social engineering aimed at shifting society (which she says should be out of ACE’s scope), and access to excellence, by which she means enabling everyone to access / participate in great art.
The Review does not go on to make an argument that participatory work is of less value or of pitting the two sides (access and excellence) against one another, and it does make it clear in later passages of the Review that work in, for and with communities is valued and valuable.
Hodge is clear that every funded organisation must make an unwavering commitment to equality, and that diversity, access and inclusion must run through every layer of ACE. This extends to its systems, which must be made accessible to everyone from first point of contact, and to its own workforce.
Baroness Hodge suggests that ACE should take on a stronger advocacy role, even commenting that it could encompass that currently undertaken by some of the IPSOs (Investment Support / Umbrella Orgs) in its portfolio. There is no indication as to how this might work in practice, or how these very diverse specialist skills and knowledge could be brought into the workforce. It outlines a brokerage role, as well as a stronger data analysis and research function.
Education
Baroness Hodge makes a call for DCMS / DFE and ACE to work together more closely to create a shared vision for cultural education and recommends a suite of programmes that ACE should deliver directly. These include the set-up of regional Visual and Performing Arts Hubs to be badged under the new National Centre for Arts and Music Education. It is not clear how she envisages these working with the existing Music Hubs. She also calls for a new national arts education endowment of £250 million to help support; a School Trips Fund, funding for artists in residence to help teach the curriculum in school hours, and for a cultural education equipment fund for schools to bid in to. All these programmes would be traditionally funded through education and school budgets.
Devolution and place-making
On devolution: the Review does not recommend that funding is devolved to any politically-led institution and rejects the idea of devolving funds to strategic and local authorities, Mayors or their equivalents. It suggests that local government can consult and advise, without funds being transferred.
It does suggest that ACE’s placemaking programmes are streamlined (including Place Partnerships, Creative People and Places and others) and recommends that two community workers are funded directly in local areas to broker relationships between arts organisations, communities and schools.
Libraries and museums
Baroness Hodge recommends that the libraries remit is removed from Arts Council England and placed with another institution. The British Library is suggested for this. The Review recommends a strengthening of the function for museums, with a new strategic framework and long-term plan to be developed.
Trust and relationships
The Review suggests that the relationship between the sector and Arts Council England needs to be reset and flags frustrations with past political interference, a lack of transparency in decision-making, and patchy support from art-form departments. It recommends that ACE’s Artform Directors are given a stronger strategic role in the organisation.
Analysis and further considerations
The Review acknowledges that the current financial ecology is broken, and without substantial investment, none of this will be possible. It makes it very clear that ACE needs more investment from DCMS; both to transform its own systems and to invest in the arts and cultural ecology. This must be addressed and actioned by the government in its response and is flagged strongly by our colleagues at Campaign for the Arts.
For Arts Council England to take on all the roles outlined in this Review; from Trading Arm to advocate, to philanthropy and research broker, to delivery organisation, it would need to transform and expand its own workforce and footprint. This will mean that DCMS will need to agree a larger investment into the overheads of ACE itself; from the short-term (substantial) funding needed to build new digital systems, to the longer-term operating budget. This does not sit with the government’s stated efficiency drive, as outlined in the Prime Minister’s Plan for Change.
ACE must create ways for artists and creatives (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 (and DCMS) must recognise that there are financial barriers to individuals and freelancers to taking part in processes and panels. There is a worrying suggestion in the Review that individuals on panels will ‘give of their time freely’. We know that such unsalaried roles will have a considerable impact on the diversity and lived-experience of artists involved in these processes.
Some funding (like lottery money) has a key principle attached to it which means that it cannot be used to supplement or replace statutory government finances.
Some of the recommendations, particularly in the education section, explicitly cover statutory education (the teaching of arts subjects) as well as enrichment, and would traditionally be funded through school budgets. The DCMS or DFE will have to consider what sources of funding are used to make these ambitions a reality, as well as considering where the government responsibility for these programmes lies. It is notable that there are no corresponding recommendations for other sectors, such as health and wellbeing, or sustainability.
Similarly, there are recommendations in the report for a range of other institutions, from DfE to local authorities (particularly the call for a statutory cultural strategy in every LA). It will be interesting to see how these other players respond. The LGA has published this initial statement, stating that all new statutory duties would need funding. Although the dramatic drop (48%) in local authority funding has been acknowledged, there are no plans in the document to address this.
In our submission to the Hodge Review we recommended that:
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.
These issues have not been expressly addressed by the Review, and we believe that they will be critical to any future strategy that governs ACE – and to all arts and cultural colleagues. It is also notable that there is very little included on ACE’s international remit, or its engagement with the devolved nations.
In making a distinction between ‘access’ and ‘access to excellence’, the Hodge Review does not acknowledge the inherently political and politicised context for art and culture, or the wider impact that it can have on communities, from health to education. For many artists, the purpose of art is to change the world, and this cannot be extracted from the concept of excellence.
Whilst the Review talks a lot about participatory work with communities, it does not address the critical place of the voluntary and amateur sector within the wider ecology, and this needs to be teased out much more clearly.
It is great to see that there is a commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, but this will need to be meaningfully threaded through all new strategies, systems and accountability and reporting mechanisms, otherwise we risk this ambition stalling at headline stage. These measures cannot be confused or elided with the reported ‘straight-jacket’ of the current Let’s Create implementation.
The Review makes a great number of recommendations that aim to stabilise the sector in precarious times, but this must be balanced with a specific focus on allowing risk and innovation and in making space for change. We want to see this at the forefront of the new strategy. New artists, organisations and ideas must have the space to flourish.