As part of a package of savings totally £11.5bn, the Chancellor George Osborne has announced further cuts to arts funding in the spending review for 2015-16.
“Art is not just about the money,” says Shadow Culture Secretary Harriet Harman in Commons debate on the arts and creative industries in the UK.
A new membership scheme from The Photographers’ Gallery aiming to nurture the next generation of art collectors and philanthropists, launches tonight. We talk to Director Brett Rogers about the project, and about future prospects and challenges as the organisation celebrates the first anniversary of its reopening.
The first major debate in the House of Commons on the arts and creative industries in over five years takes place tomorrow, following an Early Day Motion calling on the Government to ‘take forward a strategy’ for the sector.
Peter Heslip, Arts Council England’s new Director of Visual Arts, oversees a portfolio of 144 funded visual arts organisations and leads on museum funding in London. Two months into his new job, and on his first day in the office after a trip to Venice, we talk to him about supporting artists, communicating with the public and the realities of the current funding environment.
As the first results from AIR’s Paying Artists Survey make clear, artists are finding themselves at the end of the arts food chain as funding cuts bite. Here, a-n’s Director looks at how things stand and suggests a future where practitioners determine the status of their art and of artists.
In a major speech, the Scottish Government’s Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop has defended the idea of art for art’s sake and attacked the UK Government’s focus on the economic value of culture.
The first results of AIR’s UK-wide Paying Artists Survey – which focuses on artists’ experiences of publicly-funded galleries – reveal low earnings, miniscule or no fees at all for exhibiting, and shrinking production budgets.
A recent YouGov survey reveals that more people see cultural value as a justification for arts funding than arguments based on economics, but only a small minority want to see the sector protected from further cuts.
An attempt to give a Champagne bottle full of polluted water to the CEO of Shell is part of a wider campaign against the oil industry’s sponsorship of the arts.
Middlesbrough-based Navigator North has announced the artists who will be getting a share of its £4000 small grants seed fund to explore the theme of work and play.
From 1 July 2013 the application and assessment procedure for Arts Council England’s Grants for the arts will be changing.
Seventeen visual arts consortia encompassing 52 organisations – including a-n – have received nearly £2m in Catalyst funding to support initiatives to boost philanthropic giving to the arts.
Arts Council England has published a new report, conducted by the Centre for Economic and Business Research, that looks at the arts and culture sector’s contribution to the UK economy.
The What Next? conference in London on 29 April brought together some 650 arts professionals as part of a new movement to reassert the value of the arts in society. Kwong Lee, Director of Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, shares his thoughts on the day.
The first What Next? conference on 29 April included a video contribution from Sir Ken Robinson, speaking from Los Angeles. But don’t worry if you missed it – here it is, courtesy of YouTube.
In a time of austerity, it’s become more important than ever for the visual arts to articulate their value to society. But, asks Claire Doherty, Director of arts producers Situations, what forms of evidence should be produced and whose criteria are we to use?
Peter Bazalgette uses inaugural speech as Arts Council England chair to highlight how the arts can cement its ‘world class’ position whilst dealing with shrinking budgets.
The eighty-strong Artists’ Bond opens its doors to another forty members from 1 April. But, as founder Ellie Harrison describes, anyone looking for a practical funding scheme would do well to look elsewhere.
Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries, recently stated that the UK’s cultural sector is in rude health. Graham Hitchen agrees, but argues that it has nothing to do with the Coalition’s policies – and that unless things change, in ten years time it will be a very sick patient indeed.
Camden Arts Centre is setting the stage for a day of spectacular fundraising events this Saturday, as the site is transformed into the bohemian seaside home of fictional modernist Finchley Arkwright-Keslake-Essendine.
Last week, Newcastle City Council passed a 100% cut to its arts budget while at the same time agreeing to contribute £600,000 to a new fund for culture. Alison Clark-Jenkins, a regional director for Arts Council England, reveals the behind-the-scenes battle that led to the fund’s creation.
Plans for a new gallery in Leicester gather momentum following Arts Council England’s £600,000 cash injection.
Policy makers often outsource consultation to independent specialists, but do they get the full story or just the tidied up version? Ahead of Creative Scotland’s open meetings series, the arts professional behind Stramash Arts shares first-hand experience of having the ifs, buts and maybes expunged from the conversation that led to the funding body’s creation.
As part of proposals by Stirling Council to save £9m in 2013/14, the Scottish city’s only contemporary art gallery, The Changing Room, is under threat.
