National Theatre Wales (NTW), the country’s flagship English language company, has warned that it might be forced to close in six months’ time following a cut to its funding. The company has received financial support from the Arts Council of Wales (ACW) for the entirety of its existence but will no longer do so from next spring.
NTW said it was ‘deeply shocked’ and plans to appeal against the cuts. Changing the minds of the arts bureaucrats who control the purse strings could prove a tall order, not least because artistic merit appears to count for little in a world dominated by fashionable but ultimately ill-defined targets such as ‘participation’ and ‘diversity’.
If it goes, what will replace it? No one really knows.
Simply put, the decision to cut funding to NTW, which employs more than 600 people, makes little rational sense. Wales will lose ‘one of its largest employers of theatre-makers’, according to Lorne Campbell, NTW’s artistic director. He
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