Arts Council England is in thrall to a muddled idea of ‘diversity’ To widen the appeal of the arts is always sensible – but cold statistics and essentialist categories are patronising, unhelpful tools Should Arts Council England be thinking about the 'right' kind of audience? Credit: Getty The first rule for any organisation wanting to push through radical reforms without anyone really noticing is: bore your potential critics to death. Arts Council England has learned the lesson well. The latest edition of its annual Diversity, Equality and the Creative Case Report, which reports on 2019–20, is a monument to tedium. It tracks the success of the artistic institutions it funds in living up to its ruling principle of diversity, and in mind-numbing detail. If you really want to know what percentage of employees of the Hull Truck Company employed in 2018–19 count as ‘white-other’, or what percentage of the total workforce of the most important companies the Arts Council subsidises have declared themselves to be ‘non-binary’, this report will tell you (it’s 7 per cent and 8 per cent respectively).