Need to know

Q How can my arts organisations lobby government and still maintain a successful artistic practice?

A Now more than ever, all publicly funded arts organisations need to pay attention to their relationship with government. Raising profile with politicians (whether locally, regionally, nationally, even internationally) will help funders argue your case better and therefore make your funding more likely to happen. However, delivering artistic practice whilst simultaneously lobbying for your own work can be difficult. Successful lobbying takes time and skills, which are not always directly available to an organisation.
First and foremost, plan ahead and be strategic. At Greenwich Dance (GDA), where I am a board member, we include advocacy in our planning at board level and this feeds into the organisation’s three-year action plans. We identify the defining artistic events across the range of the organisation’s activities and staff make sure the relevant politicians and councillors are informed about and invited to these events. Well-paced and appealing communications are the best way to create strong relationships with politicians, who will become increasingly knowledgeable about the organisation and its contribution locally and nationally. Artists and artistic co-ordinators working at GDA can then focus on their own work, confident that the organisation is effectively outward looking.
Hitch your wagon to expert umbrella organisations in your artform or region which prioritise lobbying. Youth Dance England (YDE), which champions dance for children and young people, focuses its lobbying efforts through Dance UK which takes a lead on advocacy for the dance sector. Through it, YDE has been able to present the case for its work directly to politicians and ministers via the All-Party Dance Group of MPs, which Dance UK itself set up. In turn, YDE supports Dance UK’s work by involving its high-profile patrons – such as Arlene Phillips and Carlos Acosta – and its young dance ambassadors, providing interesting stories and helping to attract media attention.
Your artistic practice can be your most powerful lobbying tool. Choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh’s ‘Counterpoint’, for example, provided a highlight of this summer’s Big Dance. An artistic and media coup, the work shines even more brightly in the context of Big Dance’s PR campaign and creates its own powerful and compelling argument.