London’s Wigmore Hall quits ‘crippling’ funding system

One of London’s most prestigious classical music venues has pulled out of England’s cultural subsidy scheme because of “crippling” red tape and a controversial strategy that is seen as failing to prioritise artistic excellence.

Wigmore Hall will stop taking funding from Arts Council England, which gave it £344,000 of public money in 2024.

Director John Gilhooly said: “The current policy is just too onerous, and they seem to have no interest in what’s happening on the stage, [or] in the great artists of the world.”

The Arts Council said recipients of funding should be “prepared to show how they will offer the public excellent value”, and that it is “absolutely committed to creative excellence”.

Mr Gilhooly said the venue does not “fully believe in everything” in the Arts Council’s current strategy.

Titled Let’s Create, the plan is billed by the Arts Council as widening access to culture and cultural funding, but is seen by many as supporting grassroots and community work over artists who are at the top of their fields.

Mr Gilhooly said the musicians who perform at Wigmore Hall are the artistic equivalent of Olympic champions.

“We also work with a community choir. In my view, both are excellent, both are outstanding things,” he told BBC News.

“But you can’t judge a community choir on the same criteria that you judge the world’s greatest artists, just like you can’t judge the English football team against an amateur team.

“That is where we see the pressure and the tension.”

Mr Gilhooly said the venue would not stop doing outreach work.

“And the bits we do best, we’ll probably do more of. For instance, we work with people living with dementia, we’ll probably do more of that. We work with some of the most marginalised people in society. Most of that will continue. We believe in all of that.

“But it’s just the way it’s imposed through Let’s Create that’s exasperating really, and crippling for staff and for trustees.”

He added: “We have to go through this whole process every quarter to see that we’ve ticked every box.

“It takes a huge amount of staff time and energy. It zaps the energy, frankly. We’re parting on good terms, as far as I’m concerned, but it’s a good time for us to go.”

Wigmore Hall launched a fundraising appeal last year to become more self-sufficient, and has reached its target two years earlier than expected.

“We’ve raised this £10m and the interest on that alone covers what the Arts Council give us, and we’ve raised that ahead of time, which was a surprise,” Mr Gilhooly said.

“It wasn’t advertised as an anti-Arts Council fund, but the speed with which the money came in suggests, certainly in the classical music public, there’s a feeling that the Arts Council is not altogether on our side.”

An Arts Council England spokesperson said: “Where organisations feel that the success of their business model no longer requires public investment, we celebrate that success and wish them every good fortune for the future.”

They said the body takes the responsibility of spending public money seriously, and is committed to making the reporting requirements “as straightforward as possible for funded organisations”.

A statement added: “We want to be unequivocal and clear: Arts Council England is absolutely committed to creative excellence, in all the shapes and sizes it comes in, and across all the arts organisations, museums and libraries in which we invest.

“The evidence shows, however, that excellent cultural and creative opportunities, which are valued as a right by some people in some places, are still denied to too many in this country. That isn’t fair and must be addressed.”