Too Many Accountants In The Arts World Are Making It ‘Frightened’ And ‘Risk-Averse,’ Says Top UK Director

Dominic Dromgoole, who spent a decade as artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe and oversaw that company’s worldwide tour of Hamlet: “Institutionally I think we have a problem that we have possibly over-stacked our governance areas with people from the world of … accountancy. They are entirely honourable and entirely nice people, but I think from the moment they begin working on things they’re always overly calculating risk and overly worried about danger. Their inclination is to say no to any venture that they can’t absolutely 100 per cent future-proof, … so that now you have an element of fear within a lot of organisations that doesn’t need to be there.”