Its function is to provide regional support, advice and funding for arts activity. As a Local Authority Member involved with the arts over 22 years, I know more than most the enormous contribution to the arts in this country made by the Local Authorities. This is not regionalisation, this is centralisation. The entire arts delivery in England will be governed by eleven people in central London, none of whom have been elected by anybody. A single authoritative voice' does not give any impression of a desire to encourage or celebrate diversity.
Advisors have no teeth.
I fear that regional arts representation will be swallowed up by regional government bureaucracy and that decisions will be made and handed down from on high. In summary, while I am not anti change, I am very strongly anti centralisation, which in my experience creates a closed shop benefiting the institutions and the institutionalised, not the small, the independent, the 'out of the way' rural and the innovative. Indeed I would like to see arts funding and management structures further localised.