Why I fear Dame Mary Archer is speaking to the wrong people as part of her review into Arts Council England - Alan Lane

Broadly speaking that strategy believes we should be “a country where every one of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences”.

And in 2018 40 per cent of Arts Council England went to organisations in London whilst 85 per cent of the population lived outside the city and that those figures would benefit everyone by being more equal.

So Dame Archer has been set to it. But there are worries. Worries that she might only be speaking to people whose best organisational interests aren’t reflected by Lets Create.

Organisations like ENO who had a full screaming fit because they were asked to move their HQ to Manchester to spread the arts funding love a bit more fairly.

Indeed some readers might remember our own mighty Opera North began life as an outlying department from the ENO.

There was a time when they weren’t so horrified by the idea of going to the north.

As part of the inquiry there is a meeting of some of Yorkshire’s arts leaders with Dame Archer.

Somewhat surprisingly she hasn’t chosen to visit Holbeck which makes me think no one told her about the quality of the kebabs in Holbeck’s Venus Supermarket, a cultural highlight all on its own that place. She’s missed out.

It’s a lot to ask these leaders who are meeting her. To represent everything that needs to be said about arts funding in Yorkshire. A big task for a handful of people.

LEEDS2023 showed us last year the impact of the grand and spectacular - Corinne Bailey Rae arguing with a giant face made of drones at a gala show in Headingley Stadium - and the glorious opportunities that come from putting artists in close proximity to communities - cash in every ward of the city with Neighbourhood Hosts that saw dozens of events touch hundreds of thousands of people. Both have a vital part to play.

So it is nationally. The institutions with Royal in the title are an important part of England’s culture but so is the work of those less well represented in the House of Lords who connect to our communities in the close. Culture is the total ecology.

But the mainstream wisdom now is that we only have funding for one of these approaches.

If so, Dame Archer, and those who follow her, will need to make the decision with their full chest. They should know the cost and loss of each path.

In truth we are interconnected. Slung Low made an opera with 180 of Holbeck’s school children with Manchester Collective, Manchester International Festival and LEEDS 2023 last year.

So many partners, collaborating together to make it happen for those kids.

And most of our players had jobs with Halle Orchestra (another organisation who manage to stomach Manchester) - without them the talent wouldn’t have been in the region to make it work.

The idea of an either/or world is ridiculous - One National Theatre or 90 Slung Lows?

As much as it would delight me to see a community focused, Pay What You Decide group of artists spread in every English town, you need both. We all understand this. Even the ENO.

Without those in daily contact with our communities the Grand Institutions will sit like out of reach angels on brown and dying Christmas trees. This is a symbiotic relationship.Which is why the worries about who Dame Archer is talking to and about are so keenly felt by some of us here in Yorkshire who don’t walk the corridors of power, because we’re too busy keeping our streets clean.

If there is no magic solution of more money for the arts, and I look around Holbeck and find it hard to make that argument if I am honest, unless there’s also more money for our schools and our other public services, then we need to be even smarter with what we’ve got.

I am loathed to tell Dame Archer how to take care of her business but those of us working in the north, working with and for our communities have long been used to making a little go an incredibly long way.

The kebab lunch might have well have had more to offer the inquiry than just it’s own cultural highlight.

Alan Lane is co-chairman of the Slung Low theatre company in Leeds.