Mr Lewis wants the old Theatre Royal, Merthyr, renovated

Huw Lewis, AM for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, said his constituency had received a fraction of grant awards being made to Cardiff and rural areas.

He claimed figures from Culture Minister Alun Pugh showed only �2,500 had been spent in Merthyr since 2003.

The ACW disputed the figures and said more had to be done to increase people's appetite for the arts.

There are no theatres in Mr Lewis' constituency and he wants the Theatre Royal in Merthyr, being used as a part-time bingo hall, renovated and turned into an arts centre.

He said figures from Mr Pugh showed that the ACW had awarded �24m on projects in Cardiff since 2003, but claimed less than �2,500 went to groups in Merthyr.

He told the BBC Politics Show: "If you look at those solid working class communities, particularly the south Wales valleys, there is a dearth of investment.

"But yet if you look at Cardiff and rural counties of Wales, there has been investment in the millions.

There are plans for a theatre in an old chapel in Merthyr

"If we have an organisation spending �50m over a three-year period and my community is scraping together �2,500, I don't care if that is class war or not, that's a bad investment for my community."

His criticism follows the row over Mr Pugh's announcement that he would advertise for the next chairman of the ACW. He said he wanted to attract someone who could raise arts attendances among lower income groups.

Current chairman Geraint Talfan Davies has already said he will not go through the "charade" of reapplying at the end of his three-year term.

'Creating a problem'

He disputes the spending figures used by Mr Lewis.

Although he accepted there had been an under-investment in Merthyr in the past, he said that �50,000 had been spent in the past year.

"If you want to solve the question of barriers to arts attendance and participation, you have to look at employment, look at education, so you're not just dealing with the opportunities for people to sample the arts but their appetite to do so," said Mr Talfan Davies.

In Merthyr itself, there was support for the ACW.

Lisbeth McLean, a development officer with a project to turn an old chapel into a theatre, said: "I think the Arts Council are quite supportive of projects in Merthyr Tydfil.

"They attend arts forum meetings with us and encourage us to put applications forward. I hope I'll be working with them a lot over the next year on the development of the theatre".

The assembly government is taking over more direct control of the ACW and Mr Pugh called opponents' claims it is becoming more politicised "nonsense".

Mr Lewis told AMs that Mr Pugh should ignore the "bleatings of the middle class Cardiff and rural Wales-based arts crachach (elite)".

Former culture minister, Liberal Democrat AM Jenny Randerson said: "I think the culture minister is busily reinventing the class system.

"He's creating a problem which organisations in the arts have gone nine-tenths of the way to solving".