Sky Arts director criticises ‘clumsy’ ENO cuts

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Philip Edgar-Jones. Photo: Matt Frost

English National Opera board member Philip Edgar-Jones has criticised "clumsy" cuts to the organisation by Arts Council England, as he defended opera’s relevance to young audiences.

The director of free-to-air channel Sky Arts also said he "took issue" with an Arts Council England-commissioned report that found the art form might be struggling to reach "different audiences" in the modern age.

Edgar-Jones reflected: "It’s been a really difficult 18 months for ENO, because of the clumsy cuts that Arts Council England made to our budget.

"The management of ENO did a free ticket scheme for under-21-year-olds and that’s been hugely popular. We get a lot of young people coming through the door, and that’s different socio-economic groups as well; it’s not just posh young people. So I take issue with [the report]] – I think every art form has some relevance. I mean the ENO did a production of The Handmaid’s Tale that had a very significantly young audience and that did resonate and was incredibly socially relevant."

Speaking to The Stage ahead of the Sky Arts Awards ceremony, to be held at the Roundhouse in north London on September 17, Edgar-Jones said the prizes would venerate a wide variety of art forms, including classical music, comedy, dance, film, literature, poetry and theatre.

The awards build on the legacy of the South Bank Sky Arts Awards, which ran annually from 1997 to 2023 and were presented by broadcaster Melvyn Bragg.
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Edgar-Jones said the new awards were a "bit of an evolution", adding: "We thought we’d take the opportunity to do something a little different with it. So it’s going to be a bit more of a rock’n’roll event; a grander scale.

"We’re still keeping very true to the principles Melvyn set up – he was the first to really not make that distinction between popular culture and high culture, he brought the two together. So we’re still very much about celebrating the broad spectrum of the arts."

Edgar-Jones expressed particular excitement about the awards’ arts hero category, a special prize that recognises roles ranging from heads of security to wig makers. Arts and culture workers have been invited to nominate their own arts hero for the accolade, with the awards’ jury including actor and singer Beverley Knight.

The arts hero prize is partly a response to research commissioned by Sky that found that UK adults can only name an average of nine job roles in the arts, despite there being more than 650 across all arts disciplines.

Edgar-Jones said: "We conducted this survey to have a look at people’s attitudes about careers in the arts and I think there’s a couple of misapprehensions about it. One is that all jobs are front-of-camera, directing, the so-called ‘glamorous’ side of things. I think there’s another misconception that there’s somehow not real jobs in the arts, that they’re hobby jobs – that’s simply not the case.

"Parents don’t necessarily think if their kid is really good at numbers and wants to become an accountant, they could do that for a production or in the theatre or a dance company. There are really good, solid, full-time jobs there. Certainly post-pandemic lockdowns, we noticed in the TV sector, there was a bit of crisis in technical skills and training for those kinds of jobs."

Encouraging theatre workers to nominate their own local hero, Edgar-Jones added: "We wanted to shine a light on all the brilliant people who make the wigs, build the sets, light the stages, feed the crew. Those people who often go unsung but without them, the wheels of the arts would not be oiled."