Covid, the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement all led to an outpouring of statements committing to action on racial inequality in arts funding. Kevin Osborne’s initial optimism about that has since been tempered.
Can using public money to make BAME* entrepreneurs successful be in the public interest if it makes them wealthy too? Kevin Osborne sets out the challenge.
Kevin Osborne has long been exercised by systemic racial bias in UK arts funding. Last month he produced a panel discussion aimed at ‘digging deep’.
With a Government report recommending the dropping of the term BAME, people have been challenging Kevin Osborne’s continued use of it. He remains ambivalent about the proposed change.
The distribution of Arts Council England’s Culture Recovery Fund has attracted widespread criticism, not least from those campaigning for greater diversity. Kevin Osborne calls for urgent action.
To future-proof the creative sector we must root out systemic funding bias against BAME organisations, says Kevin Osborne, starting with an equitable sharing of the £1.57 billion bailout package.