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Arts sector colleagues in Northern Ireland (NI) could be forgiven for glancing enviously at their English counterparts as the implications of the NI Assemblys Draft Budget allocation for the arts, sink home (p3). Theres no such thing as good news, of course, and we would be ill-advised to expect it. Nonetheless, what has happened, or could happen, to the arts in Northern Ireland if this draft budget is voted through, is sufficiently bad to have sent shockwaves through the sector. The response from arts leaders has been withering. The budget is absurd, said Brenda Kent of Voluntary Arts Ireland, whilst Rosemary Kelly, Chair of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) talked of a death knell for the arts. And when Steven Hadley, Chief Executive of Audiences NI, says that the budget combines, a deeply dispiriting lack of vision, alongside, a failure to understand the socio-economic realities of the early twenty-first century, the anger is clear and the condemnation complete.
How the draft budget has ended up in this sorry condition is not clear, and it is not for us to accuse the Northern Ireland Assembly members of budgetary incompetence. Nonetheless, its worth bearing in mind that this is their first budget, and one has the worrying suspicion that they are rather proud of it. The focus in preparing the draft has been, not unreasonably, the economy. But there is a worry, ever-present with subsidised arts funding, that the potential funders do not fully appreciate the economic value of the arts. This is not an argument about the inherent value of pictures on a wall, or the relative worth of actors on a stage. It is a compelling economic case, which argues that the arts form a major industrial sector, and that the business done by that sector the money it generates could be of clear and lasting benefit to the economic well-being of society. Over the next ten weeks of consultation, ACNI and many others in the sector will be pressing hard to make that case we wish them well.

Nick Jordan
Editor

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