This sounds more like standard bureaucratic graft to me, where some private-sector middleman is going to get paid a bunch to "evaluate art quality" according to some proprietary set of "art quality metrics". The article says that the metrics platform will be owned by Counting What Counts Ltd, and organizations receiving grants will have to license it from them for £2,000/yr. Basically the business model of "shitty overpriced software you're required to have" that Blackboard Inc. pioneered in higher education.

Also generally part of a current trend (also seen in the sciences) where more and more grant money gets plowed back into managing the grant process itself rather than going to the things the grants are nominally supposed to fund.