Arts Council England (ACE) - Page 5 of 9 - a-n The Artists Information Company

February saw the inaugural OpenAIR: Effecting Change members forum take place at Firstsite, Colchester as well as State of the Arts, Arts Council England’s (ACE) annual conference, which had Artists’ Shaping the World’ as its theme. Emily Speed, Jack Hutchinson and Gillian Nicol give their views of these events.

An abridged version of Dany Louise’s follow-up report on small visual arts organisations cut by Arts Council England, six months after her ‘Ladders for development’ enquiry. She asks: how have these organisations fared and what do their futures hold? Read the full version of this report with updates on all surveyed organisations: www.a-n.co.uk/realising_the_value

Is there enough funding going to individual artists and are the application processes user-friendly? These were questions a-n set out to answer in the fourth issue of what was then Artists Newsletter in 1980. Now, thirty one years later, we asked Dany Louise to do this research again, examining the current state of play for grants to individual artists as offered by Arts Council England, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Arts Council of Wales and Creative Scotland – including comparators of volumes of artists applying and success rates – and to ascertain whether a “fair share” has been getting into the hands of artists to develop their practice.

In her report on Turning Point, Phyllida Shaw unwraps the ‘what’s what and who’s who’ of this major strategy for England, to support discussions on greater participation by, and development for, artists within it.

Funding for the arts has never been an easy sell – not with governments or the public. April Britski, Executive Director of CARFAC reports from Canada.