News

« Headlines

Turmoil at British Council

17.01.08 Joel Rickett

All members of the British Council's literature team are being asked to apply for new roles under a controversial restructure at the organisation. The literature team, along with specialist teams in dance, drama and music, is in the process of being disbanded to fit a new "project-based" multi-disciplinary arts strategy.

Around 10 specialist literature staff including director Susie Nicklin have been asked to apply for new roles by 29th January. "We are now consulting with the literary world about the proposed changes," Nicklin said. "Nobody is against changes—but the more opinions you canvass, the more insight you get."

After protests by artists this week, the council's c.e.o. Martin Davidson said it remained "deeply committed to the arts in all its forms", and promised a consultation on its arts strategy. But in a letter to The Guardian on Wednesday, sculptor Richard Deacon said that Davidson was being "disingenuous", as the new structure was already being rolled out regardless, and the specialist advisory boards had been closed.

The literature team works with partners in 70 countries to promote British authors overseas and share best practice on reader development, literary festivals and publishing. It is running the cultural programme for the Arab world at this year's London Book Fair, as well as the International Young Publishing Entrepreneur Award. Its 350 projects include teenage reading schemes in -Russia, oral poetry in Africa and creative writing in Bangladesh.

The council said it aimed to "mobilise our resources in different ways to deliver bigger, global projects with the same amount of cash resources [£30m]".

Joel Rickett British Council

Add comment

By posting on this website you agree to the Bookseller Comments Policy. Comments go direct to live, please be relevant, brief and definitely not abusive. Report any "unsuitable" comments by clicking the links.

Name

Comment

Email

Comments on this article

By Chris Hamilton-Emery

I worked for the British Council back in the early 1990s. I followed this up with a career in publishing and now help run international independent literary publisher, Salt. I've run the business for seven years now, as well as a mainstream poetry and short story list in the UK, we have an indigenous publishing programme in the USA and Australia, publishing over 80 books a year worldwide. To my knowledge, I've never been contacted by the British Council Literature Team, at least not independently of my own queries as to why our multi-award-winning writers were largely excluded from their work. I suppose my query about the future of the Council would be whether, as Britain's largest independent mainstream poetry press we might find a bit of support for our own work in Africa, Poland and Eastern and Central Europe, the USA, Latin America, the Caribbean and Australasia?

17 Jan 08 17:01

Unsuitable?

See Also