ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 unpacks the word “funding” to reveal its many different meanings, and its tendency to mean different things to different people at one and the same time. The artists hired by government-funded arts promoters think they are earning fees, for instance. People visiting free admission art galleries (many of these exist in the UK) rarely stop to ask about funding arrangements that keep the galleries open, or stop to ask why they are expected to pay for tickets when attending government-subsidized play, concert, opera and ballet performances.
Funding—the act of handing out money—creates expectations (more money, further down the line), of which later generations of funder have to take account when making allocation decisions. Large, highly prestigious arts organizations which have come to depend on funding over decades will fight back, and fight dirty, if talk of funding system reform seems to threaten their privileges. Funding has consequences in other words, not all of them benign. Funding system inertia, together with the power of vested interests, makes change for the better very difficult to bring about.
