This week, the talk of tough times got very real here in the north east, as Newcastle City Council announced the prospect of devastating cuts.
This impossible position for local authorities isn't new news; back in June the Local Government Association (LGA) produced a funding outlook report for councils, modelling the unprecedented impact of government spending cuts, and the Guardian's data team have also mapped the likely impact across local authorities in England. With depressing familiarity, they fall heaviest in northern cities and London boroughs.
As part of measures to save £90m over three years, Newcastle City Council has set a budget consultation that proposes 100% cuts to the arts, 50% cuts to museums and a cut to libraries that would close all but two public libraries in the city.
There's something profound about 100%. Everything, the whole, the sum total. It's the symbolism of that number which stops us in our tracks.
But there are other numbers at play; for arts organisations in the city, the council funding represents between 4% and 14% of turnover – the arts here have never relied on a single source of funding. As the other cultural funder in the city, Arts Council England (ACE) is working closely the council to develop a way to make those numbers add up to something that results in maintaining a strong cultural infrastructure.
There's a line in the sand – we cannot be the only cultural funder in Newcastle, but we've always worked in partnership here, and that's not going to change. We're on the case – this is our development and advocacy role writ large and real. There's an energy emerging in Newcastle, as it will all over the country: the fight for culture is very much on.
But in a way the numbers aren't the point. The vibrancy and viability of a city is inextricably linked to its culture. The Cultural Olympiad in the city was a triumph of excellence and engagement, and a huge in your face reminder of the value of the last decade of arts funding.
Playwright Lee Hall cut his teeth on theatre in Newcastle and it remains a rich source material in all its social and political complexity. His shows Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters are passionate versions of the value of culture and education – as at home on Broadway as on Broad Chare. And his recent open letter to the Newcastle council is as fine a piece of writing as you'll see on the subject.
Hall is right that the death of heavy industry hit the north east hard, and he's right the city found a new pride through culture. It's also through culture that the most moving elegies to what we have lost are manifested.
In 2011, thanks to the Tyneside Cinema and mixed funding sources including ACE and the Port of Tyne, The Unthanks and Richard Fenwick collaborated on a stunning film and music event, Songs from the Shipyards, which traced the history of shipbuilding. It has just finished a nationwide tour in advance of an album release, and has been seen by thousands online at the Space. Scroll down to Only Remembered, the last film and a haunting hymn to the death of the shipbuilding industry.
That industry is history on Tyneside; the film returns to a memory of what we once did. The industry of culture is now part of what Newcastle and the north east stands for. Tough choices are still choices; we can't only be remembered for what we have done, twice.
Alison Clark-Jenkins is a regional director for Arts Council England, as well as blogging on arts and cultural policy issues – follow her on Twitter @alisoncj and ACE North East @ace_northeast
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