Nick Ahad: Long live art that shouts boo at the funding bogeyman

YOU know how, when you're little, there is this fear that the bogeyman lives in your wardrobe?

Or maybe under the bed?

And then remember how the bogeyman, when you get a bit older, turns out to be shadows cast on the wardrobe by the lights of a passing car, or nothing more than a creaky floorboard under the bed.

Well, the Olympics, once held up as the bogeyman of the arts world, might not be such a monster after all.

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No sooner had Seb Coe and his lot started celebrating the winning of the Olympics for London than the cohorts of the arts world started declaiming it as nothing short of disastrous. The Olympics, they said, were going to rob artists and arts venues of essential funding.

A lot of accusations were hurled and I was as concerned as anybody.

Pots of public money, these days especially, are finite. The coffers were going to be plundered for a festival of running, jumping and throwing.

Wouldn't you know it then, that this week I meet someone who flipped the argument on its head.

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Andrew Morrison, curator of archaeology for York Museums Trust, is an eternal pragmatist.

We met at the British Museum which is exhibiting an impressive collection of medieval treasure, moved from the Yorkshire Museum while it undergoes a 2m refurbishment.

"Gosh," I said and whistled much in the manner of a mechanic examining underneath the bonnet of a car.

"Two million pounds to raise in this climate. Thank goodness for the Arts Council."

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Not exactly. The money it is costing to refurbish the Yorkshire Museum has been raised without any input from the Arts Council. It has all come from charitable donations.

With the Olympics approaching, said Morrison, they knew that in the future they would not be able to rely on large grants and so decided to get ahead of the game.

Revolutionary, I know. It made me realise that, essential though lottery money distributed through the Arts Council is, we can, if absolutely necessary, do without.

In fact, in times of strife the art that does manage to burst through is often blessed with a vital kind of life force.

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I also met this week Jane Thornton, wife of John Godber. We talked about how she and John met and how they spent a number of years taking work to the Edinburgh Festival. This was long before her husband became the John Godber, before there was any money.

One of their early sets was two chairs, because that was all they could fit in the back of the car that spirited them up to Scotland.

It is that kind of inventiveness and a sheer necessity to make art in the face of any obstacle – and Morrison's pragmatic approach – that will combine in the face of any Arts Council funding shortfall.

If my hunch proves right, we could be in for a few years of seriously exciting work, simply because it is the sort of work that will have a will to live and shout boo at the bogeyman.

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