SWINDON could be a cultural desert if the council's proposed cuts to arts funding go ahead.

That is the claim being made by the chairman of Swindon Artists' Society, Diana Crafer.

The council's cabinet announced on Wednesday that £800,000 needs to be cut from next year's budget if it is to balance the books. And over the next three months it will consult voters about where these cuts will come.

Possibilities include closing ten small libraries and creating seven centres of excellence, closing Swindon Dance and scrapping the arts manage-ment service which supports Swindon Literat-ure Festival.

Representatives from the town's arts community have urged councillors to look elsewhere for savings.

Mrs Crafer said: "The threat of making council arts officers redundant is pretty awful but to cut several of the libraries and museum staff will make Swindon the cultural desert it is continually being tagged. We will never get city status.

"It is a dreadful outlook that goes across all bands including dance, acting, music as well as our pictorial art. I am devast-ated.''

Swindon Literature Festival director Matt Holland said that the cuts are a direct threat to his event. He said: "For the council not to be supporting the Literature Festival financially in any way would be an embarrass-ment and a real surprise.

"The festival will go ahead in some form but maintaining its current high profile is being put in jeopardy."

Swindon Dance, which is used by nearly 50,000 people a year, is facing the possibility of being closed down altogether by the council.

Loretta Hendricks, whose sons Floyd and Damien both studied at the academy, was shocked by the news.

She said: "Swindon Dance is giving so many opport-unities to young people who can't afford to go to the big dance schools.

The council spends so much money on doing useless things when they should give it to places like this who are helping young people make some-thing of themselves."

According to Benedict Eccles, director of Sixth Sense theatre group, the arts funding cuts would jeopardise Swindon's hopes of winning a Government Private Finance Initiative Scheme to build an arts quarter in the area around the Wyvern Theatre.

He said: "When the council understands the potential damage to the PFI cultural scheme they could be losing millions of pounds investment.

The Depart-ment of Culture Media and Sport will not further our PFI bid if there are no services to put in these new cultural buildings."

He added: "I think when the council discovers the lost investment which will come from any cut in grants they won't go ahead.

"When they realise that Sixth Sense brings in £4 for every £1 that the town gives us why would they cut that service?"