An e-mail arrives from Roisín McDonough, Chief Executive of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, which features some staggering facts, eight of the best of which are posted below ...
My own comments are added, in parentheses.
Please support the campaign for increased funding for the arts [in Northern Ireland] - and please act now while there is still time to influence the outcome of the budget settlements.
Facts:
1. The arts economy in NI is worth almost £30 million per annum, with over £12 million being generated annually in earned income. The return on public investment is considerable, with every £1 of public money invested by the Arts Council generating a return of £3.62 to the local economy.
[If nothing else, investing in the arts would appear to make good business sense - that's a profit of over 250%]
2. The creative industries in NI employ 33,567 people, or 4.6 per cent of the workforce. This is more than many of the traditional mainstays of employment in NI, including agriculture.
[And yet so many of our policy makers in NI (including the Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure himself) are farmers. This is an historical bias, and as such agriculture seems always to be top of the policy agenda - despite the fact that we have proof not only that the arts industry employs more people, but that the arts actually accounts for almost 5% of NI's total workforce. Surely that proves it to be a sector deserving of investment?]
3. In a competitive international marketplace, business leaders cite the presence of a rich cultural environment as one of the major incentives for locating their businesses. Our flagship projects, such as the Lyric Theatre and the Ulster Orchestra, play a part in creating that environment, making Northern Ireland a location of choice and attracting direct investment in the economy.
[The views of business leaders are taken seriously by our politicians in NI - big business needs to say more in support of the arts sector, and louder too]
4. The people of Northern Ireland deserve the same cultural entitlement as our neighbours – the arts are not after all just for London, Dublin, Liverpool, Cardiff, Cork or Glasgow. Northern Ireland receives the lowest level of public investment in the arts across the UK, at £6.13 per head of population. In the last financial year Scotland received £11.93 and the Republic of Ireland, the equivalent of £12.61.
[Even those in NI who claim to have no assoication with the arts should be asking the government why they are being treated differently to their counterparts in the rest of the UK and Ireland - this is, at its core, an issue of parity]
5. In October 2007, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, James Purnell, M.P. announced an increase of £50 million to go to Arts Council England in the 2008-2011 spending cycle, saying that, “Our arts and culture matter. They are a key part of the life and identity of our country, and that's why the government has invested heavily in them since 1997.” Meanwhile, since 2004/05 funding to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland has been frozen, which effectively means it has been decreasing in real terms.
[Typically, while the rest of the UK is looking to the future, policy makers are ensuring that NI remains a number of steps behind. NI has many years worth of catching up to do in terms of funding the 'key parts of the life and identity of our country' - we should actually be setting the pace in these matters, instead of failing even to keep up]
6. The Government’s diversion of Lottery funds to the London Olympic Games 2012 means that Lottery funding for the arts in NI will drop by a further £4.55m to an estimated £4.74 million by 2011/12. Reversing the historical deficit of funding in the arts in Northern Ireland requires an uplift of funding of just under £9 million per annum, a total of £26.9 million over the three years of the CSR period. This would place spending at just under £11.50 per capita, on a par, with other countries in the UK.
[Again, the demand is not for an unusually high level of investement - just enough to ensure parity with other parts of the UK]
7. The increase in the annual arts budget sought by the Arts Council is very modest in relation to the overall Northern Ireland budget – the Arts Council’s current budget is less than one third of one per cent of the health budget; or two thirds of one per cent of the Education budget.
[This puts into perspective the arguments of the dissenters who claim that funding for the arts somehow deprives more 'practical' governmental budgets, jeopardising our children's education or putting the nation's health at risk. The Arts Council currently survives on much less than one percent of either of the health or education budgets, so we can safely assume that there is room for a funding increase that won't result in the country being propelled into a state of emergency]
8. Several important consequences of no spending uplift and a 5th year of standstill funding for the arts:
• Programmes will close, putting the future of dozens of organisations in jeopardy.
• Over 200 full-time and part-time jobs could be at risk.
• Over 25,000 participants from across NI, including many young people, will be denied access to outreach activities and engagement in the arts.
• Over 3,000 arts events will not take place.
[These projections speak for themselves - the Province's arts sector really is on the verge of a massive crisis from which it would never recover]
The people that need understand the situation better:
Mr Peter Robinson MP MLA
Minister for Finance and Personnel
Department of Finance and Personnel
Craiganlet Buildings
Stoney Road
Belfast
BT4 5SX
Email: private.office@dfpni.gov.uk
Tel: 028 9185 8111
Web: www.dfpni.gov.uk
Mr Edwin Poots MLA
Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure
Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure
Interpoint
20-24 York Street
Belfast
BT15 1AQ
Email: private.office@dcalni.gov.uk
Tel: 028 9025 8825
Web: www.dcalni.gov.uk
Follow any updates on www.artscouncil-ni.org
