Arts Council announces funding cuts

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Venues which received celebrity backing, such as the Bush Theatre in west London, are celebrating after the council reversed its decision to withdraw funds. But many smaller and less glamorous organisations have not been so lucky.

Chairman Sir Christopher Frayling mounted a strong defence of the new plans and said the council was "not a cashpoint machine".

The council is to withdraw funding altogether from 185 organisations, condemning them to an uncertain future and possible closure. A further 27 will have their grants reduced.

Unveiling the spending strategy for 2008-2011, Sir Christopher said: "We are redistributing resources, not treating the arts as a fixed landscape for all time. This is the strategy of a confident organisation that is prepared to take risks, just as we ask our arts organisations to take risks. We should always go for excellence and not shy away from difficult funding decisions when the need arises."

Explaining why some grants had not been renewed, Sir Christopher said: "There is quite a complex mix of reasons and there is no formula. With some organisations, the feeling was they had run out of puff. Some were on a downward curve."

The council's new chief executive, Alan Davey, added: "Change of this nature is inevitably difficult - difficult for the Arts Council to have the courage to make these decisions, difficult for the organisations facing non-renewal.

"But no change to the portfolio would have been the easy option for the Arts Council. We owe it to the arts and to audiences in this country to have done the right thing rather than the easy thing."