'The idea that you can cut a £180bn deficit by slicing money out of the budget of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport is frankly absurd." The words of an arts bureaucrat, theatre director, artist or writer with a special case to plead? No: Nick Clegg's, in the election campaign. Now his coalition wants cuts for culture and sport, over the next four years, of between 25% and 30% – the greatest crisis in the arts and heritage since government funding began in 1940.

This is how Nicholas Serota began an article in The Guardian of  October 4th.

But the great and the good in the world of the arts should not be particularly surprised. As far back as January 2009, Andy Burnham (then Culture Secretary in Gordon Brown’s government and now Shadow Education Secretary) was already giving advance notice of cuts ahead. In an article for The Stage he is quoted as saying that

In the pre-budget report, the chancellor indicated that further efficiencies would have to be secured in the third year of the spending review. So, all parts of government have to hear that message and live in the real world. Some people may not like it, but the arts has to live in the real world too. Nobody is immune from what is happening.

With the Directors of the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sadlers Wells Theatre and the South Bank Centre joining Serota and many others to sign a letter of protest drafted by Arts Council England on July 15 it is clear that the big guns of the theatre are running scared.   In this climate of alarm it is particularly pleasant to note that - outside the major centres - things, albeit in a modest way, may be flourishing.

Last night the hall in our little Buckinghamshire village was packed out for a one-woman show, with Sandra Hunt (sandra-hunt@live.co.uk) playing the role of Helle Nice, described in the programme as an

artists’ model, dancer and champion racing driver [who] went from the dreariness of peasant France to the demi-monde of 20’s Paris to the death defying circuits of Europe and America. She was sultry, sexy, dancing half naked; she was gritty, driven, taking the chequered flag ahead of the pack.

    

As a quick internet search will reveal, Mademoiselle Nice did in fact have a quite extraordinary career, one which Sandra Hunt, with precious little in the way of props, brought to life with verve, imagination and energy. Top marks to her, as well as to Stewart Howson, the writer and Fine Time Fontayne (aka Ian Crossley), the director.

Top marks also to ‘Theatre in the Villages’ the organisation (funded by Aylesbury Vale, South Bucks and Wycombe District Councils) which exists to bring professional performances to the villages of Buckinghamshire and has 12 different shows scheduled for venues throughout the county during October-December.

arts@aylesburyvaledc.gov.uk

‘Theatre in the Villages’, I see from the programme, is a member of the  National Rural Touring Forum, the organisation

that represents a number of mainly rural touring schemes and rural arts development agencies across England and Wales.

And who helps to fund the National Rural Touring Forum? Arts Council England. Ooh ooh. That’s where we came in, I fear.