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ACE up her sleeve

14.02.08 Tom Tivnan

The national offices of Arts Council England (ACE) are in the midst of a major refurbishment. Scores of workmen in hard hats scurry about; the sound of drilling and hammering is non-stop. Walls are being ripped out, and exposed wires hang from the ceilings.

A fitting place, then, to meet Antonia Byatt, ACE's new director of literature strategy, to discuss an organisation whose direction is being changed dramatically. ACE recently announced its 2008–2011 funding cycle, the most radical shake-up in its 60-year history. Its new strategy of "delivering excellent art to the widest range of people" has meant that 185 regularly funded organisations (RFOs) had funding cut, with the literature RFOs reduced from 81 to 57.

It has not been an easy ride for Byatt since she joined in September. ACE has been criticised by both government and Tory culture spokesmen for how the process was conducted. The timing in particular was called into question, with threatened arts organisations only having five weeks over the Christmas season to respond to proposed cuts. Some of the affected publishers have fought fierce, often rancorous, campaigns to try to save their funding, notably Arcadia Books and Dedalus Publishers.

Byatt says she "absolutely understands" the vociferous response. "Why wouldn't an organisation be worried about its future in these circumstances?" she asks. "Obviously, if you are one of the people who have had funding cut, you are going to be disappointed. But I think now with the full funding picture released, the public has a better understanding about the range of organisations that have benefited."

The settlement could be viewed as a win for literature. ACE's literature RFO bud-get will increase 10.5% over the next three years, up to £6m by 2010/11. Byatt says part of the idea is to fund fewer organisations better: "Some of the money will be spent on widening the scope of these organisations, so they can operate on a much higher capacity and more nationally."

She mentions London-based performance poetry group Apples and Snakes, which will see its budget rise from £293,221 this year to £440,474 in 2010/11. "It used to be quite London, quite niche," she says. "Now it has a national reach and develops relationships with the education sector. It's not just about poets performing, it's about engaging lots of different kinds of people."

Reader development through libraries is another strand Byatt will focus on. "There are some quite big questions about what the future of the library will be," she says. "But they are still the place that houses the rich imaginative treasure of books. And they are still the place to connect people in an area to books."

Literary heritage

As the daughter of prize-winning novelist A S Byatt and niece of Margaret Drabble, Byatt has been connected to books most of her life. There is a sense she is a trifle wearied about being asked about her mother, but she remains a good sport about it. "Oh, you're going to go into that, are you?" she says with a laugh when the subject comes up. "Yes, I can't deny it. It has helped in this job, I do know a lot about writers. But it has caused some confusion, too, over the years."

After reading English at Cambridge, Byatt decamped to New York for a year to work for a photographer. "I had a little period where the best thing I thought I could do was escape," she says.

She soon came back to Britain and, partly propelled by her love of books and writing, eventually landed her first stint in the literature department at ACE in 1988. That time was challenging as well. "I took over when the literature department had been deceased temporarily. We had to do a lot of work to resurrect the programme."

She next moved to head the Southbank Centre's literature programme, and later became the director of the Women's Library, a women's history archive. Those two jobs in particular are standing her in good stead with her current role, she says. "I know how difficult it is to try to balance the books and get funding in."

Given her background in programming literature events, it is unsurprising that Byatt is keen for ACE to increase support for literature festivals. "We see an increasing ACE role in supporting the more risky and more expensive things to get programmed in literature festivals, like international literature and new writers."

Publishers play an important role too, she adds. Byatt views the money ACE gives to publishers as something like the boost larger publishers are able to give some of their less commercial titles with the money made on their bestselling books. "Chatto and Random might not make money on every translation they publish, but they are cross-subsidised. Faber might not make money on most of its poetry list, but it is lucky because it has T S Eliot's rights."

The commercial versus art-for-art's-sake balance is particularly finely balanced with poetry. "If you took out the poetry publishers that we fund as RFOs, I think it would be fair to say you would decimate poetry publishing in this country. But I would also say that we are helping them reach the widest audience, publish as well as they can, and make as much in sales of the book as possible."

Byatt believes that literature is the national art of the UK. "I think it's not that arrogant to say that we are sitting on one of the biggest international publishing industries in the world. London is a global city of literature. What we do must be in that context, and we have to spend our money carefully."

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