'The message from these theatres is a simple one: please cut us, don't kill us'

If they are not in a rehearsal room directing a show, they are running a building and monitoring bottom lines. Much of the time, they're doing all three.

To bring four of Yorkshire's ADs together in one room is quite a feat, but in the present climate their willingness to meet is also an indication of the severity of the crisis facing the arts in our region.

"We want to be here when the recovery happens. There will come a time when the economy is in a stronger position than it is now, and people will miss our buildings if they aren't here," says Ian Brown, artistic director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Brown, joined by Daniel Evans of Sheffield Theatres, Gareth Tudor Price of Hull Truck and Chris Monks of Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre, came together at the Leeds venue to present a united front in the face of impending public spending cuts – which could see the arts singled out as a soft target.

"The message is a simple one – cut us, don't kill us," says Tudor Price.

The new coalition Government had barely settled in and Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt was still picking out the art work for his office walls when he made his inaugural speech about the Government's culture spend.

The arts were safe, he said. The new coalition understood the value of culture, he said. He wanted to see more philanthropy, he said. At that point, alarm bells began to ring.

"Jeremy Hunt talks about philanthropy. What do they (the coalition) think theatres have been doing for the last 20 years? We've been trying to find money from these rich people," says Daniel Evans, the man in charge of Sheffield Crucible, Lyceum and Studio theatres.

"I worked as an actor for 15 years and there's not a week gone by when you don't have to sit at a table with a bunch of rich people trying to charm them on behalf of a subsidised theatre. The thought that pots of money are going to suddenly appear is short sighted at best."

Identifying philanthropy as one of the cornerstones of future culture spending, Hunt explained holes need to be plugged in the deficit and the arts was one of the places where the savings would have to be made. For this financial year the West Yorkshire Playhouse has 1.6m Arts Council funding, Sheffield Theatres 1.4m, Stephen Joseph 711,751 and Hull Truck, 559,035.

However, every arts organisation in Yorkshire which receives regular Arts Council funding has been told to budget for 10 per cent cut in 2011, but the full scale of what's coming won't be known until later

this year.

Evans says: "Right now it's the calm before the storm. We're not sure what's going to happen, so we're all campaigning to make the case for all our organisations."

However, as they put the case for the defence there will inevitably be some awkward questions. The first is a simple one. Why should they receive subsidies from the public purse? Their theatres, the argument goes, are places that are visited by a privileged few. Why should public money fund the hobbies of the well off?

Monks says: "We have some of the most deprived wards in North Yorkshire, areas of the town have a big drug problem, it's not the middle class haven that people think it is. If society is going to cut back on the money it gives to things like social work, then our work is going to become even more necessary."

"The reason we are subsidised is so that it's not just for rich people," adds Brown. "We are given public money so schools can come and people can come at an affordable rate. If we charged our audiences at the cost of what it takes to make a piece of work, then that would exclude people."

Theatre makers are practiced at speaking in public – it's what they do – but when the public see a message delivered with a lot of style, they sometimes question the substance.

Brown says: "All the evidence points to the fact that every pound of money the Government spends on theatre, it gets back through VAT and taxation. I cannot understand why that message doesn't mean something. I've never liked the word subsidy, I prefer investment because a lot of money spent on our buildings goes back into society.

"I believe that towns and cities with theatres are better places to live in than towns and cities without theatres, but in broad business terms we are economic drivers for a lot of things that happen in Leeds."

Monks, whose theatre opened its latest production Communicating Doors the night before the meeting, says: "I spoke to someone last night who comes from Switzerland every year, he is seeing Mikado tonight, our two lunchtime plays – he's got to be spending money in the town as well as the money he's spending on tickets."

Evans also makes the economic argument, but also sums up what he calls the "emotional argument", one that each of the directors is passionate about.

"How do you measure the effect of someone seeing Shakespeare?" he asks, to the sounds of much approval.

"Not only does theatre provide society with something as unquantifiable as that, it gives an excellent return – it's 17 pence in every hundred pounds that is spent on theatre and we give back double – triple in some cities – that amount. We can't measure the effect of Shakespeare, but fortunately that's where we are able to fall back on the very powerful economic argument."

However, when those who do visit the theatre, paying about 20 a ticket, look around and see nearly 800 other people there, it's easy to see why they struggle to believe it can be in any financial hardship.

Ian Brown's answer is simple: "Without subsidy, those tickets would be a lot more than 20."

Tudor Price, flicking through Hull Truck's season brochure, adds: "20 is our top price for a ticket on a Saturday night." The same goes for The Stephen Joseph Theatre, according to Chris Monks. The return on the investment from the arts is more than financial, say the artistic directors.

Chris Monks says: "Stephen Daldry started his career at the Crucible. People are nurtured through theatres. It's a creative stew that goes on all the time. Last year, one of our shows was in New York where it got great reviews and won awards – we are global ambassadors of culture for the whole country." Evans adds: "One of the things England is known for world wide is culture. There was a count of the number of Oscar winners and a huge number of them were British actors who started their professional lives in subsidised theatre. It's one of the reasons tourists come to Britain."

"Pitmen Painters, by Lee Hall (the man who wrote Billy Elliot) came out of a 200-seater, subsidised theatre in Newcastle that specialises in new writing," says Tudor Price. "That show transferred to the National Theatre and is now going to go to Broadway. If we lose the subsidised theatre, we lose all of that."

Brown adds: "People ask why they should pay for culture. What those people have to remember, even if they don't go to the theatre, that most of them in the evening will put the TV on, or watch a dvd. All of the things they watch are created by people who had training in the subsidised arenas of our country. It's something we do really well.

"If the Government keeps cutting theatres in 20 years time that ecology will not have produced these people. Everything will suffer – you won't see British actors winning Oscars, because they won't have come from the subsidised sector which trains them."

While nobody knows the extent of the cuts until later this year, the artistic directors were asked to imagine a worse case scenario. What if there was a 50 per cent cut tomorrow – would the theatres survive?

The answer is no.

"It would be catastrophic," says Tudor Price.

Monks argues: "You wouldn't have our theatres, but you wouldn't have the National or the RSC either."

The fact is, cuts are coming and the buildings in which we watch theatre will have to adjust to a whole new way of thinking. That they are facing the potential of drastic cuts which will see a dramatic impact is something we may all have to live with.

Brown adds: "One of the things our buildings do is bring people together. People have been making plays and seeing stories for thousand of years and people still need to do that."

THE ARTS COUNCIL CHIEF: 'THE ORGANISATIONS WE INVEST IN HELP TO SUPPORT BUSINESSES'

Cluny Macpherson is regional director of Arts Council Yorkshire. He talks to Nick Ahad about changing times for the arts.

Once upon a time, Walmgate in York wasn't the obvious place to go for a good meal – but recently it was voted one of the best places in the UK for food lovers to visit. It's hard to say exactly what caused the turnaround, but investment in the York Early Music Centre at the end of Walmgate certainly played its part.

"I was lucky enough to be at the opening of the York Early Music Festival the other week, there were 600 people there," says Cluny Macpherson, head of Arts Council Yorkshire. "Those 600 people were spending money on parking, accommodation and eating out in York. The arts organisations we invest in help to support other businesses."

As chief of a quango which hands out public money to arts organisations and events, Macpherson knows not to expect praise from either the public, nor the arts community, who each have their own ideas as to the most deserving causes.

For now, however, Macpherson, his team of 30 (reduced from 40-plus in a re-shuffle in April) and the organisations they fund are facing a common obstacle. Stringent cuts are looming and they are going to have the biggest effect on the Arts Council in its 60-year history. There is a lot up in the air and much depends on the details of the Government's October spending review. The Arts Council hopes the Government will agree to a policy of backloading, allowing these cuts to be staved off for one year to let organisations change the way they operate. If they don't, many will be forced to face their worst fears and Macpherson is out campaigning as hard as the organisations which he funds.

"Hopefully, most organisations will survive, but it is dependent on us being able to backload the cuts we know we are going to have to make. If we can't do that, in November, we will have to tell some organisations that they have to make savings of 25 per cent in the next financial year. Some organisations are going to fold whatever the outcome of the spending review, but if we can't backload, many more will follow."

There is no running away from it. These are worrying times.

Arts Council Yorkshire has 108 Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs) from galleries and theatres to music centres. When the new Government announced cuts in the public subsidy, Arts Council Yorkshire made an immediate 0.5 per cent cut to all its RFOs. It also warned them to budget, in the next financial year, for cuts of 10 per cent.

The spending review is expected to contain further cuts of between 25 and 40 per cent.

"The organisations we invest in are an absolutely vital part of a business ecology," he says. "Not only do these places and organisations produce art, they encourage people to come to cities, go to restaurants, stay in hotels. Those visitors bring huge benefits to our economy."

In the age of austerity, many involved in the arts know there's a danger their work is classed as a unaffordable luxury and one which only touches the lives of the middle and upper classes.

"There may be a stereotype that the arts are a luxury for the elite, but the reality is so far from that," says Macpherson. "The arts touch and benefit so many peoples. At a more philosophical level, it is simply a sign of the kind of society I would want to live in. If you think about all great societies and civilisations, you think

about the art they create and the great individuals who were the artists, philosophers or poets.

"It is also about the variety of art that we help to provide. People can enjoy a production at the Playhouse, which the Arts Council helps to fund, or a youth club where a hip hop session is run. How do you measure the value of those two things?"