News – £1.25m for street arts producers

A series of new funding partnerships targeted at independent street art and festival producers has been announced by Arts Council England (ACE). The funding awards, totalling over £1.25m, are designed to have a positive long-term impact on the wider street art, festival and multi-disciplinary sectors nationally – through the creation of exciting new work. The bulk of the money, which is drawn from Grants for the Arts and strategic managed funds, has gone to Artichoke Productions, the company which managed the staging of The Sultans Elephant in London last May. Between January 2007 and March 2008, Artichoke will receive £620,000 to develop two or three large-scale performance works and to establish a programme of training opportunities for artists and emerging producers.
Other recent awards to support independent producers include £200,000 over two years to five London-based, cross-artform producers; £160,000 over two years for the professional development of interdisciplinary producers working across the West Midlands; and £90,000 over three years to Martin Sutherland, based at Newbury Corn Exchange, to expand opportunities for the production of new work. Explaining the new focus, a spokesperson referred to ACEs new focus on participation: “It is true to say that in our agenda, the development of this kind of work  encouraging participation in the arts  is absolutely a priority.”

Artichoke is currently working on several large public events which will be staged at various locations around the country. Associate and trainee producers are being recruited to work on specific projects, and the company has voiced hopes that the ACE support will be extended. David Micklem, Senior Theatre Officer at ACE, said, “These awards are the latest results of our growing strategic focus on the role and impact of producers  entrepreneurial individuals, many of whom operate outside the formal structures of arts organisations… Work of this scale and public focus is key to our ambition to put the arts at the heart of national life.”