The Hodge review is a huge opportunity for the Arts Sector

What Hodge got right

The review doesn’t just say “give us more money”, although the funding picture isn’t pretty (per person public spending on culture between 2009 and 2023 by ACE and local authorities fell 18% and 48% respectively).

It asks harder questions.

How does the application process itself create barriers? Why does engaging with the funder feel more like compliance than partnership? What happens to all the data that organisations painstakingly report, and does anyone use it?

Hodge called for simplicity, accessibility and proportionality. Those three words should be pinned to the wall of every meeting room where the implementation gets discussed, because the gravitational pull in any large institution is toward “more, just in case”. More fields on forms. More reporting requirements. More hoops. The review names this tendency directly and says: stop.

The great news is the government has backed the vision and ACE has committed to it. What comes next is vital.

The £8 million question

ACE is building a new digital platform, phasing in from 2027-28. Initial services include a touring service, modernised accreditation, a refreshed Government Indemnity Scheme and a music growth package. A comprehensive service for individual artists follows.

This investment is welcome. ACE absolutely needs robust, modern systems for its own funding programmes. Anyone who’s worked with the existing infrastructure knows how important this is. The sector deserves application processes that work reliably and don’t require a manual to navigate.

But I want to make a case for thinking bigger than “better ACE software.”

The most impactful version of this investment shouldn’t just improve ACE’s own processes. It should seed the infrastructure that connects ACE to the wider ecosystem of arts activity happening through the organisations it funds. Awards, open calls, residencies, commissions, grants – all running on their own platforms and tools, generating data and insights that could directly flow back to ACE (and vice-versa).

I’m not arguing ACE shouldn’t build. It should. It must. What I’m arguing is that building AND connecting would multiply the impact of every pound invested, simplify processes for all stakeholders and create clarity for the sector (and clarity makes a better case for funding! Nothing like a virtuous cycle).

What the sector already knows

Now, I need to be transparent. I’ve spent nearly fifteen years working on exactly the problems the Hodge Review identifies – simplifying admin for submissions for awards, grants, residencies in the creative sector with Zealous. So yes, I have a perspective. I also have a genuine interest in this going well. Beyond any commercial consideration – the sector I’ve built a business around gets stronger if ACE gets this right.

What I’ve learned in those fifteen years is that the hardest problems in submissions management aren’t often technical, they are human. Getting an artist to finish an application instead of abandoning it at the upload stage. Getting a judge who hasn’t logged in for three weeks to complete their reviews before the deadline. Designing a form that captures what the organisation needs without making the applicant feel like they’re filling out a tax return (and we all love those!).

These problems have been chipped at across the sector. Not perfectly, not uniformly, but substantively. Hundreds of organisations have already adopted digital tools, iterated on their approaches, measured dropout rates, figured out what works. That’s over a decade of user research conducted at scale, paid for by the organisations themselves.

ACE’s response to the review promises to co-design the new platform “with users to meet the needs of our sector.” Brilliant. I hope co-design doesn’t just mean workshops and surveys. It means looking at what users have already chosen. The tools they’ve adopted. The workflows they’ve built. The decisions they’ve made when nobody was asking them to fill in a feedback form.

The sector’s existing digital practices is not a problem to be replaced. They’re evidence to be studied.

Let’s talk about data

I get excited about data, and I appreciate this might be a slightly niche thing to get excited about, but data is key in making a case for funding culture – and doing it as efficiently as possible.

The government’s response calls for ACE to develop an evaluation and monitoring framework and to ensure data assets are “fully realised within and beyond the Arts Council.” Data needs to flow in both directions – not just organisations reporting to ACE, but ACE sharing useful data back (the key difference).

But there are also much bigger datasets sitting outside ACE entirely.

Every time an organisation runs an open call, it generates data. Who applied. Where they’re based. What discipline. Whether they were selected. Criteria judges scored them against (not what score they got, that should always be private). What stage of career they’re at…

Multiply that across hundreds of programmes and you’ve got the most comprehensive picture of creative opportunity in the UK.

ACE could approach this in two ways. Build a centralised system where all activity happens inside ACE’s walls. Or build connective infrastructure – standards, APIs, shared frameworks – that lets data reporting flow between the tools organisations already use.

Centralisation means one platform, one point of failure, one institution’s design choices shaping everyone’s experience. Interoperability means organisations keep using what works for them, and the data still adds up to something useful at a national level.

TfL didn’t build one app for every passenger. It opened its data and Citymapper happened. That’s a better model for arts infrastructure than forcing everyone onto a single platform.

Supporting artists

The bit of the review that resonates most is the ‘one-stop-shop for artists and freelancers.’ Because the problem it’s trying to solve is the one I started chipping at with Zealous 15 years ago.

The biggest barrier for individual artists isn’t just paperwork, it’s discovery.

Not just discovery of their work, but discovery of the opportunities that will support them in their craft at the current stage of their practice.

An emerging artist in Margate looking for a residency opportunity shouldn’t have to rely on knowing the right people or following the right Instagram accounts. The opportunities exist. They’re just scattered across hundreds of organisations (if you haven’t checked it out yet, Starving Artists does a great job with listings) with different deadlines, eligibility criteria and application processes. Some are well-promoted. Some are practically invisible unless you’re already in the network.

This is one reason the access problem persists even when opportunities technically exist everywhere. It’s not that Bradford doesn’t have opportunities (although it could always do with more!). It’s that an artist in Bradford can’t easily see the full landscape of what’s available to them.

Technology can genuinely help here. Matching algorithms. Recommendations based on discipline, location and career stage. Personalised alerts when relevant calls open. Some platforms (including ours) are already building these features. ACE’s new individual service could supercharge this, particularly if it connects to opportunities across the whole funded sector rather than just ACE’s own programmes.

Done well, this could be the single most impactful outcome of the entire review. An artist in Grimsby finding the same opportunities as an artist in Hackney (and if no opportunities exist in Grimsby, then that gives ACE a clear direction on what to support in the future).

What next?

This is a once in a generation opportunity to transform how we support the culture in the UK. A chance to make a bigger impact with fewer resources. We need to make sure we don’t let it pass us by.

I’m aware this article is, at some level, a founder making the case for an approach that benefits his business. But I also genuinely believe that the sector has something to offer this process beyond filling in consultation forms and waiting to be told what the new system looks like.

If you run an arts organisation: engage with ACE’s platform design process when it opens. Don’t just say what you want. Show them what you’re already doing. The tools you use, the workflows you’ve built, the problems you’ve solved. That practical experience is worth more than any requirements document.

If you’re at ACE or DCMS: the sector hasn’t been standing still while the review happened. There’s fifteen years of digital innovation sitting in the organisations you fund. Some of it’s scrappy. Some of it’s sophisticated. All of it contains real insight about what artists and organisations need, tested at scale. Building with the sector, not just for it, will get you to Hodge’s vision faster and cheaper than starting from scratch.

The review called this a moment for structural reform. I think it could be something much more valuable: a moment where an institution and the sector it serves build something together to transform a whole sector for the better.

That’s worth rolling our sleeves up for.

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