New focus for NI

 More funding for voluntary and community-based arts, greater equality in arts provision and an obligation on funded organisations to increase their education and outreach provision are among recommendations made by the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Committee on Culture, Arts and Leisure. The Committee was reporting on its inquiry into the funding of the arts, which included nine research reports, and written and oral evidence. It also seeks to increase the amount of private funding available to community arts and to assess how much funding is being spent on the arts from non-arts sources, including other Government departments. The issue of the lower level of per capita spending on the arts in Northern Ireland as compared to other UK and EU nations is also highlighted (AP163).

 The Committee recommended that “more money should be spent on community and voluntary arts, given their impact on regenerating communities and providing people with opportunities for participating in arts activities”, and that Arts Council Northern Ireland (ACNI) should increase funding “to voluntary arts organisations.
Voluntary Arts Ireland endorsed these recommendations, saying that “over 10% of the Northern Irish people take part in the arts through the medium of voluntary arts groups”. Speaking to AP, Robin Simpson, Director of the Voluntary Arts Network, welcomed the formal public recognition of both the intrinsic and instrumental value of voluntary arts, and added, “Amateur arts groups contribute towards a range of local and national government agendas and targets and represent enormous potential because of the sheer scale of their activity.”

A spokesperson for ACNI welcomed the Committee’s focus on the funding situation, adding that the arts are “increasingly recognised for their contribution to our social, cultural and economic success”. However, Mick Duke, the Artistic Director of Tinderbox theatre company in Belfast, voiced the fears of many when he told AP that if funds were diverted to community and outreach work, then Northern Ireland’s relatively small artistic infrastructure could suffer. Tinderbox’s outreach programme is largely funded by the Community Relations Council, which promotes better community relations between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland and recognises cultural diversity. Duke said that the recommendations did not recognise that “outreach programmes need a strong base to reach out from – so if you don’t fund professional theatre work you risk wiping out a successful, dynamic and cost-effective way of involving thousands of people in high quality activity”. He added that “it would be necessary to get the funding above what is normal per capita elsewhere, to ensure we have the best possible arts infrastructure”.

The report also recommends that the Department for Culture, Arts and Leisure and ACNI should “work with Arts & Business Northern Ireland (A&B NI) to ensure that more support is given to community-based arts organisations in terms of accessing private sponsorship”.

Mary Trainor, Director of A&B NI, told AP that “investment is needed to strengthen the infrastructure” to enable the community and voluntary sectors to develop. Arts Minister Nelson McCausland is currently considering the report’s recommendations, and is likely to respond to the Committee at the end of January.