Why must the British government try to coerce arts organizations who want funding? The arts get attached to education, to multiculturalism, to every social good of the moment. “There is a feeling across the performing arts that subsidised companies have been drained of vital energies during the Blair years – or, at the very least, have been distracted from their core function of creating art. A resentment has crept in. Many performers don’t want to be educators.”