Theatre consultant to review financing of Abbey

The Arts Council has appointed a UK-based arts management expert to review funding structures at the Abbey Theatre, which faces a deficit this year estimated to exceed €2 million.

The council said yesterday it had asked Ms Anne Bonnar, a founding director of the National Theatre for Scotland, to report back to it with recommendations by November 12th.

Ms Bonnar, a director of consultants Bonnar Keenlyside, which offers management advice to festivals and theatre groups in the UK and Ireland, will evaluate the report of the Abbey's restructuring working group, which this week called for additional Arts Council funding to address the theatre's financial crisis.

The council announced the appointment as it published a pre-Budget submission yesterday.

Calling for a 30 per cent increase in its budget to €68 million for 2005, the council said arts organisations were "creaking" under the strain of underfunding in recent years.

Ms Mary Cloake, director of the Arts Council, said the Abbey had suffered disproportionately from the funding cutbacks. However, she said, the council was also concerned about the future of other organisations.

"Always, you find that big organisations find it very difficult in a climate of decreasing funding because big organisations are often the ones that can take the cuts in the short term, and in the long term the Abbey is an example of what happens when the cuts come home to roost," she said.

In support of its submission, the council published figures showing grant aid to the State's biggest arts organisations had fallen by 18 per cent in real terms since 2001.

For the Abbey, grant aid had fallen in real terms by 24 per cent over the same period, the biggest drop suffered by any State-funded theatre.

The figures did not include a once-off €1 million grant for the Abbey this year from the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism for the theatre's centenary programme.

Ms Olive Braiden, council chairwoman, said artists had applied for more than €96 million in funding next year, which illustrated current support was "inadequate in both scale and scope".

Of 1,500 proposals received across various award categories in 2004, only 500 were funded.

Ms Braiden added there would be some people in the arts sector who would say the council should be demanding more than €68 million next year. "But I think this is a fair and reasonable position and I hope it will be accepted as that."

Ms Cloake said the council had not earmarked a specific figure for the Abbey next year but: "We feel that with €68 million we will be able to respond to the Abbey and the other organisations. If the review comes in and says something different we will have to look at that afresh."

She said all the major stakeholders in the Abbey were determined that "we will try to do a deal, or get a funding structure, or make organisational changes in the Abbey, which will consolidate the organisation so that it won't be in crisis again."

Rejecting suggestions that administrators in the arts sector were bad financial managers, Ms Cloake added "the arts is extraordinarily well managed by people who are really dedicated and who have very inventive ways of making ends meet."

The Arts Council said it had received 410 applications from arts organisations for revenue funding next year.