National arts lottery: dream or nightmare?

LONDON - A little over a year after its introduction, Britain's National Lottery has been described both as a dream machine and a nightmare. Three out of four adults buy lottery tickets, generating much more money (around 1 billion [pounds] or $1.5 billion per year) than expected. But its existence is bitterly criticized by churches and charities and its allocation of funds, particularly to the arts, stirs storms of controversy.

The lottery was created by an Act of Parliament in November 1994 to raise money for projects and institutions that would not otherwise benefit from public funds. The lottery cake is divided into five slices that go to arts, sports, charities, national heritage, and a millennium fund for projects celebrating the year 2000. Prime Minister John Major has justified the new lottery by saying "These causes can never successfully compete with welfare and defense needs for public funding."

A lottery ticket for the weekly Saturday night draw costs one pound (or $1.50). All you have to do is pick six numbers between one and forty-nine. There are also one- and two-pound "instant" scratchcards, run by the same lottery organizer, Camelot, referred to by some critics as "Grab-a-lot" because it takes five percent of the stake money. Fifty percent goes to prizes, twelve percent to taxes, and about twenty-eight percent to the five causes.

Five government-nominated panels disburse the funds. The arts panel has eight members, including filmmaker David Puttnam and singer Cleo Laine. They sift through lottery applications and make recommendations to the Arts Council, which distributes all public money to the arts. This body makes the final decision. At present, lottery money must be used for capital projects - such as building upgrades or the purchase of musical instruments - and not for people or productions. Its backers promised that the lottery would not replace government funding, but augment it - an assurance widely distrusted by arts organizations.

As of November 1995, 55 million [pounds] had been awarded to the Royal Opera House for its redevelopment scheme, estimated to cost a total of 213 million[pounds]. Sadler's Wells Theatre will get 30 million[pounds] to build a new theatre on the same site. Royal Court Theatre has received 21 million[pounds], and 50 million [pounds] has gone to the Tate Gallery. Recipients are required to find "partnership funding" before lottery money is handed over: twenty-five percent of the total of any grant over 100,000,[pounds] ten percent of the total of smaller amounts. While lottery money has also gone to the regions, the first major arts awards have benefited London. This has caused resentment, even though London's theatres, museums, and galleries are recognized as national assets badly in need of modernization.

The arts awards have met with controversy because the press, particularly the tabloids, claim the poor are subsidizing the pleasures of the rich. The Royal Opera House and Sadler's Wells have been pilloried in the popular press as places where the idle rich are diverted by men in tights, paid for by the working class's scratchcards.

Spurious comparisons have been made between "opera toffs and sick tots" - affluent operagoers versus hospitals for children. The way disbursements have been scheduled has contributed to the fear of charity organizations that they will be left out. Awards to arts, sports, and heritage concerns were announced first. In the first year of the lottery, the arts received 230 million[pounds], compared to 40 million[pounds] for charities. Applications from the thousands of charities have simply taken longer to process than those from large arts organizations, which already had redevelopment plans in place when the lottery came into effect, and thus could submit their applications immediately. The charities are nonetheless asking for compensation, on the grounds that their general donations have slumped because of the lottery; donors, they say, now assume that they are taken care of, and aren't aware that the organizations get only six percent of the lottery money. Any inequities from the first year will be rectified in future years, lottery officials say.

As far as the arts go, the lottery does indeed appear to be a dream machine, enabling the repair or replacement of decrepit buildings and making it likely that grand new projects will be realized by the millenium.

In the near term, the beneficiaries of the lottery have been bureaucrats - planners, consultants, and advisors - not artists. And although the public will, sooner rather than later, enjoy new housing for the arts, the buildings won't be much use without artistic product to go into them. The hope is that once the buildings are in place, lottery money will start going to individual artists and organizations, who struggle, at present, to survive on limited Arts Council subsidy and/or short-term business sponsorship. One scheme already under discussion is an endowment fund from the lottery, earning interest on which arts bodies could draw to supplement - not replace - government funding.