Hundreds of arts organisations were last night celebrating their biggest boost in funding for nearly 20 years.
Literature, for long the Cinderella of the subsidised sector, was the biggest winner from the extra £21m shareout announced yesterday by the Arts Council, with core funding increased by 75%.
A large chunk of that will go to the most impoverished writers of all - poets - through the Poetry Society, the Poetry Book Society and the Arvon Foundation.
The still more impecunious world of performance poetry was given a lift with a fivefold rise so the Apples and Snakes group could expand its "slams" (performances) nationally.
The visual arts also did well with grants up by nearly a third, while dance stands to gain an extra 17 % from 2002.
More significantly, 50 organisations, led by the Centre for Children's Books and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, whom the Arts Council admitted had previously had a "hand to mouth existence", were also given the security of guaranteed three year funding.
The extra money, which follows £25m to help revive battered producing theatres and a further £40m for the arts-in-education Creative Partnerships scheme, comes as the culture secretary, Chris Smith, floated the idea of more money to help individual artists by reviving state commissioning. Mr Smith believes that money should be set aside to help the "lost generation" of young artists who missed out on money to develop their talent through the barren Conservative years of the early 1990s when subsidy was slashed and bureaucracy stifled experiment.
Mr Smith said he would like to see these young and not-so-young artists, writers and directors given medium term bursaries or fellowships and being "allowed to get on and do what they do best".
He also wants to revive the tradition of greater state commissioning of the type which the Arts Council pioneered in its early years after the second world war.
Peter Hewitt, Arts Council chief executive, described the funding round as "the best for the arts in many, many years".
Of the big national institutions, the Royal Shakespeare Company did best, with its budget increased by a quarter from next year, while the National Theatre got a much more modest 7.6 % rise.
However, Mr Hewitt denied they were punishing the National, which has come in for sustained criticism during the early years of Trevor Nunn's term as artistic director.
There were similar large-scale rises across the regional arts boards.
However, there were also a few losers, led by the London International Festival of Mime and the Visions theatre festival in Brighton, which will not be receiving any extra funding.
