Time running out to save museums and theatres – The Yorkshire Post says

The York Museums Trust is a case in point. Responsible for many of the city’s acclaimed attractions, a £1.5m loss sustained during the Covid-19 lockdown leaves it on the brink of having to make some of its 144 staff redundant.

Appealing for public donations, it says it has “exhausted every type of government aid currently available” and will continue to struggle as paying visitors will not be returning in pre-lockdown numbers and the bulk of its money comes from ticket sales and so on.

Yet, presumably, this is the type of organisation that Ministers had in mind on July 5 when they announced a so-called “world-leading £1.57bn rescue package” for “Britain’s globally renowned arts, culture and heritage industries”.

It saw Boris Johnson declare: “The UK’s cultural industry is the beating heart of this country. This money will help safeguard the sector for future generations. Chancellor Rishi Sunak lauded the 700,000 people working in this sector as “the lifeblood of British culture”. And Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden added: “I said we would not let the arts down, and this massive investment shows our level of commitment.”

All fine words – but they’re also empty if the curtain continues to come down on theatres, museums, and arts groups because of delays distributing the £1.57bn with large parts of the culture sector still in lockdown limbo. It is surely prudent to start allocating grants now to those organisations with proven track records before it is too late to save them.

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