Artists and creatives stand on the brink of financial disaster following announcements that the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund will be ringfenced for organisations at imminent risk of failure.
Tate Gallery will be one of the beneficiaries of the Government’s £1.57bn bailout. But as major organisations consult on redundancies, rumours are flying as to who else will – or won’t – receive funding.
A scathing new report says the Government’s inadequate response to the threat posed by Covid-19 risks undermining its own ‘levelling up’ goals and reversing decades of progress.
Indoor performance pilots with the London Symphony Orchestra will shape further reopening plans amid concerns about the safety of singing, brass and wind instruments.
A National Partnership for Culture will advise and influence Scottish Ministers on the delivery of Scotland’s culture strategy, but national funding agency Creative Scotland is not a member.
Creating a National Arts Force of freelance and gig economy workers to work in schools, care homes and communities is among recommendations to the Scottish Government for the preservation of jobs and recovery in the creative sector.
A Cultural Investment Participation Scheme offering repayable finance could kickstart the cultural sector’s economy under proposals being drawn up for Government to take a quasi-equity stake in theatres.
BAME arts leaders, the community arts sector and the Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee have all raised concerns that those with the ear of Government are not representative of the sector.
Proposals for a taskforce to help ‘get the music industry back on its feet’ and a petition to increase royalties for streamed music are among the latest measures aimed at putting pressure on the Government to support the music industry.
Delivering solutions to social and economic problems after the pandemic will require policy-makers in different areas to “re-think received wisdom” about how they should function, and collaborate more closely rather than ‘jostle for space at the table’.
Elsewhere in the world national lotteries are being run in ways that don’t rely on the profits from gambling, while providing an incentive for businesses to pay their taxes. Are there lessons to be learned? Graeme Bennett looks at the evidence.
Subsidy doesn’t shield or separate arts activities from the economic system; it enables them to be part of it, says Stephen Hetherington. Wringing more value out of creative assets could deliver new sources of finance.
As governments start to draw up plans for supporting the post-virus cultural sector, the voices of those working in it are the most important. Liz Hill introduces a new series of articles.
Post-Covid, the twin pillars of cultural policy should be social justice and environmental concern – but collectively we have been failing on both counts. Can this pandemic finally spur us on to make a better world, asks John Holden.
The Labour MP’s recent report on the role of culture confronted “the perception, and the reality” that arts, culture and creativity are middle class pastimes with too great a focus on London and the South East.
The Other Side – what should it look like and how can we get there?
As governments start to draw up plans for supporting the post-virus cultural sector, the voices of those working in it are the most important. Liz Hill introduces a new series of articles.