With the recent announcement by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland that both QSS and Paragon Studios in Belfast have lost all their annual funding, Damian Magee addresses the impact of the decision on the city’s artist community and argues that it is indicative of a general lack of support for artists living and working in Northern Ireland.
Two artists’ studios in Belfast are among the seven dropped, with 100 arts organisations sharing £13.1m as the Arts Council struggles to deal with a £23m reduction in public spending on the arts over the past six years. Arts Professional’s Christy Romer reports.
With the announcement last week that James Richards is to represent Wales at the 2017 Venice Biennale, joining Rachel Maclean for Scotland, Phyllida Barlow in the British Pavilion and Jesse Jones for Ireland, Belfast-based curator Hugh Mulholland laments the continuing absence of a Northern Ireland presence at the world’s longest running art biennial.
The key finding of this study reveals that shockingly few individual artists apply for funding in their own right, and even fewer are successful. What this means is that there is little direct funding being given to artists to pursue and develop their own projects, under their own control – under 20% of available funding for the visual arts in England, 14% for Northern Ireland and around 18% for Scotland and Wales in 2009-2010.
From over 2,000 entries, 59 projects were shortlisted for Artists Taking the Lead. Artists get a
The Arts Council Northern Ireland has fulfilled its pledge to plough the hard-won uplift of £1.7m it secured straight back into the arts in Northern Ireland.
The Visiting Arts Artist to Artist International Scheme 2006 provides the opportunity for an artist from overseas to spend a week in the UK with a UK-based artist, enabling an exchange of ideas and information and the strengthening of relationships and networks.
The announcement by Northern Ireland’s Review of Public Administration (RPA) last November avoided offering specific proposals for cultural funding but suggested that responsibility for the arts will ultimately be handed over to local authorities.
Following on the tail of proposals in Scotland and Wales that would drastically curtail the powers of the arts councils there comes news of a review in Northern Ireland. Under threat is the UK’s ‘arm’s length’ principle of arts funding […]
