Following our previous public statements regarding the concerning emissions of Arts Council England's grants towards a number of Club Culture organizations (read more here), it has emerged that Resident Advisor directly profited from what have known as“plague events” by offering its services to promoters, cashing in an average of 12.5% per ticket, while in 2019 it paid out at least £255.657 in remuneration and dividends, receiving money in October 2020 for being primarily an international ticket sales company, highly criticized for their whitewashing of the industry, despite the fact that too many artists, professionals, and independent organizations did not receive any, or adequate, support.
While their grant application claimed that funds would be used for essential business expenditure, it is important to note that Resident Advisor Ltd and Resident Advisor Tickets Ltd were making, and still does, payments to the trust owned by its directors.
Publicly available financial statements from Resident Advisor Ltd and Resident Advisor Tickets Ltd mention that rental payments have been made to that trust for an amount of £100,000 in 2016 and £130,000 in 2017. Overall, the directors received millions in dividends, salaries, freelance fees, and rental payments between 2015 and 2018 according to financial statements submitted to Companies House.
On the other hand, another organization that has received enormous sums Boiler Room (£791,000), has officially been sold to Dice FM, the latter recipient of public funds through the Government’s Future Fund program, as this article indicates, underlining the absolute waste of public money towards organizations, who were in no particular need of such funds.
The Arts Council has replied to us by stating that they are ”unable to comment directly on individual applications”, informing us that “the Arts Council have scrutinised all applicants against the strict criteria of this fund set by Government”, while drawing our attention to the fact that “that making an income is not is prohibited while in receipt of a Culture Recovery Grant”, yet, as the funding criteria indicates, the support was aimed at “organisations that were financially stable before Covid-19, but were at imminent risk of failure and have exhausted all other options for increasing their resilience.”
They concluded by affirming that “reviewing this criteria is not something that we will be able to do at this time”.
However, as the Culture Recovery Grant was based on financial losses caused by the pandemic, the fund has clearly not taken into consideration profits of previous years, alternative revenues streams that were in place (as some organizations had to close their doors), trust payments, and more.
Unfortunately, a ticket seller, in our view, cannot be described as an artistic or cultural organization, without mentioning the fact that they continued selling tickets to events during the pandemic, in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th wave, and beyond.
This is without mentioning those investigated for money laundering, or where people lost their lives due to inadequate safety measures, both of which should raise concerns regarding the validity of the applicants.
Furthermore, following the acquisition of Boiler Room, the huge sums of public money they received, with the Government acquiring a share in the organisations that acquired the brand, the ACE funds are given appear to be unjustified, and unnecessary, thus a form of refund should be placed, and distributed to those in need, or who haven't received adequate support.
As such, we still o ask ACE to review the criteria for the emissions of such financial assets, and redirect Emergency Relief Fund Organisation & Cultural Recovery Funds towards helping independent organisations & artists, who have not received adequate support during this year and 7 months.
Please do make your voice heard too by signing our petition here
