Research published by Arts Council England (ACE) into relationships between ACE and its stakeholders, while largely positive, found that local authority partners were more negative than others about its effectiveness in achieving its mission.
Although 76% of regularly funded organisations (RFOs) thought that ACE understood their objectives, only 54% of local authority partners agreed; while 27% of local authority partners thought ACE did not help them to achieve their objectives, compared with 14% of RFOs.
One local authority organisation said: “It’s always ready to work in partnership when the Arts Council is in the lead… but in other work… there was little attempt to share ideas and thinking.”
But Stephen Snoddy, director of the New Art Gallery Walsall, said that as both a regularly funded organisation and a local authority partner, the gallery had a strong relationship with ACE, and that the gallery was split between a local authority mentality and an ACE one.
An ACE spokeswoman said that although the research was published recently, it was carried out prior to the organisation’s restructure earlier this year.
“We now have a relationship manager based in each of ACE’s regional offices,” she said. “And part of their role is to make sure that our relationships are engaged with local authorities in the way that they should be.”
