Victoria and Albert Museum

Arts Council of Great Britain: records, 1928-1997

Series description

Scope and content

These files contain correspondence between the Arts Council's Finance Department and those with whom it had dealings, mainly those receiving grants and subsidies. The correspondence includes offer letters and is augmented by quarterly returns, estimates, reports and other information sent, either in support of applications, or, as part of the requirements for receiving aid. Most organisations have a separate file, but some are grouped together in files relating to particular schemes, e.g. Awards to Artists, Drama Projects or Ethnic Minority Arts.

These files provide the main record for the history of the Arts Council's financial support of organisations and provide details of all payments to these organisations.

This filing series seems to have originated as the main (and possibly only) series in the Finance Section. Thus additional early files may be found within it relating to non-funding affairs, such as premises, publicity and so on. However, as the Arts Council became a more complex organisation, so its filing systems became more complex and these mainly administrative files were moved to other series. Later files therefore deal solely with funding matters.

Arrangement

The files in this series are arranged alphabetically by file title. For display purposes they have been divided into four sequences; this page lists file titles A to D. Follow the links for file titles E to L, M to Q and R to Z.

Access

Restrictions on access

Access to unpublished material less than 30 years old is subject to the written permission of the Arts Council of England. Apply in the first instance to the Archive of Art and Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum.