Arts Council puts extra £1.6m into Northern Ireland’s |
11/03/2008
The Arts Council announced today that it has fulfilled its pledge to plough the hard-won uplift of £1.7m it secured through the NI Budget 2008-11 straight back into the arts in Northern Ireland. 96 organisations will benefit from an increase of £1.6m through this year’s round of annual Arts Council grants, totalling £9.6m with the remaining £100,000 earmarked for support for individual artists.
Overall 96 organisations will receive funding to support their year-round running costs. The announcement will come as welcome news to the arts sector, which had been bracing itself for another year of standstill funding aggravated by declining Lottery funds.
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Making the funding announcement, Arts Council Chief Executive, Roisín McDonough, said, “We’ve managed to lift levels of funding for most of our core arts organisations, building stability where it’s needed most. These organisations will now be able to begin important and long-awaited development work, instead of just surviving.
“The Council continues to have to make difficult strategic decisions, but we have been able to offer support to many organisations we feared might become casualties of funding shortages.
“We were forced to close one of our major funding programmes at the end of last year due to the raid on Lottery funding for the arts to fund the London 2012 Olympic Games, leaving 56 of our arts organisations clearly at risk. Thanks to the additional monies made available to us in January through the NI Budget 2008-2011, I’m delighted that we’ve now been able to bring most of these organisations back in from the cold”, Ms McDonough concluded.
32 at risk organisations will now benefit from the added security of annual funding, including Maiden Voyage, one of the leading contemporary dance companies in Northern Ireland; the Open House Traditional Arts Festival of innovative music, arts and culture; Ransom Productions, producing quality-driven Northern Irish theatre productions and promoting local professional talent at home and abroad; and Youth Action Northern Ireland, employing the arts to improve skills and confidence especially amongst marginalised and vulnerable young people.
Thanks to the additional £1.7m from the NI budget, the future looks brighter for the arts in Northern Ireland. However, there is still much ground to make up to achieve the levels of funding enjoyed by the rest of the UK and Ireland.
• The Arts Council of Northern Ireland is the lead development agency for the arts in Northern Ireland. It is the main support for artists and art organisations throughout the region, offering a broad range of funding opportunities through Exchequer and National Lottery funds.
• In January 2008, as a result of the Northern Ireland Budget 2008-2011, the Arts Council received an uplift of £7.55 million over the next three-year funding period. The increase in the coming financial year 2008-09 is £1.7m on top of the Arts Council’s current annual budget of £10.5 million.
Although greatly welcomed, the uplift remains far short of the increase needed to deliver a per capita funding figure that matches that of our neighbours on these islands.
Year |
2007/08 |
2008/09 |
|
|
|
Arts Council England (£) |
£413,155,000 |
£429,000,000 |
Population |
50,763,000 |
50,431,700 |
Percapita ( England £) |
£8.14 |
£8.51 |
Arts Council of Wales (£) |
£28,472,000 |
£28,522,000 |
Population |
2,966,000 |
2,966,000 |
Per capita ( Wales £) |
£9.60 |
£9.62 |
|
|
|
Arts Council of N.I. (£) |
£10,532,000 |
£12,232,000 |
Population |
1,742,000 |
1,724,408 |
Per capita ( Northern Ireland £) |
£6.04 |
£7.09 |
The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon |
€80,000,000 |
€82,000,000 |
Population |
4,239,848 |
4,239,848 |
Per capita ( Republic of Ireland £) |
£14.42 |
£14.78 |
Please note: Figures for Scotland are not available due to the merging of Scottish Arts Council and Screen Scotland.
• Arts Council awards made through the Annual Support for Organisations Programme (March 2008), supporting the year-round running costs of arts organisations:
Organisations highlighted in italics have successfully transferred from the Multi Annual Funding programme, which closed last year as a result of diminishing Lottery funds.
Artform |
Organisation |
Award |
Architecture |
RSUA |
45,000 |
|
|
|
Community |
An Gaelaras |
84,867 |
Arts |
Belfast Community Circus |
147,500 |
|
Community Arts Forum |
115,196 |
|
Culturlann McAdam O Fiaich |
161,290 |
|
Eden Place Arts Centre |
30,000 |
|
New Belfast Community Arts Initiative |
38,000 |
|
Prison Arts Foundation |
71,280 |
|
Streetwise Community Circus |
33,531 |
|
The Beat Initiative |
100,000 |
|
Wheelworks |
60,000 |
|
|
841,664 |
|
|
|
Craft |
Craft Northern Ireland |
130,000 |
|
|
|
Drama |
Aisling Ghear |
67,320 |
|
Big Telly Theatre Company |
105,000 |
|
Bruiser Theatre Company |
45,000 |
|
Kabosh Theatre |
81,890 |
|
Lyric Players Theatre |
606,722 |
|
Partisan Productions |
20,000 |
|
Prime Cut Productions |
100,950 |
|
Ransom Productions Ltd |
20,000 |
|
Spanner in the Works |
14,460 |
|
Tinderbox Theatre Company |
104,000 |
|
|
1,165,342 |
|
|
|
Dance |
Dance United NI |
24,250 |
|
Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company |
55,000 |
|
Maiden Voyage |
20,000 |
|
|
99,250 |
|
|
|
Health, |
Adapt NI |
70,000 |
Voluntary, |
Arts & Disability Forum |
76,271 |
Disability |
ArtsCare |
45,292 |
|
Drake Music Project NI |
42,000 |
|
Discovery 80 Ltd. Share Centre |
20,000 |
|
National Deaf Children's Society |
20,000 |
|
Open Arts |
70,081 |
|
Voluntary Arts Network |
60,000 |
|
|
403,644 |
|
|
|
Literature |
Blackstaff Press Ltd |
79,300 |
|
Creative Writers Network |
60,000 |
|
Guildhall Press |
35,000 |
|
Irish Pages Ltd. |
30,000 |
|
Lagan Press Ltd |
49,600 |
|
Linen Hall Library |
35,000 |
|
Verbal Arts Centre |
175,657 |
|
|
464,557 |
|
|
|
Music |
Best Cellars Music Collective |
19,000 |
And Opera |
Castleward Opera |
159,000 |
|
Moving on Music Limited |
109,150 |
|
Northern Ireland Music Industry Commission |
20,000 |
|
Opera Theatre Company |
100,000 |
|
Sonorites Festival |
20,000 |
|
The Contemporary Music Centre |
20,000 |
|
The National Chamber Choir Ltd |
20,000 |
|
Ulster Orchestra Society Ltd |
2,050,113 |
|
The Nerve Centre |
198,911 |
|
|
2,716,174 |
|
|
|
Traditional |
All Set Cross Cultural Project |
25,000 |
Arts |
Andersonstown Trad/Contemp Music |
50,000 |
|
Belfast District Set Dancing |
20,000 |
|
Irish Traditional Music Archive |
20,000 |
|
Mid Armagh Community Network |
23,000 |
|
NI Piping & Drumming School |
56,510 |
|
Open House Traditional Arts Festival |
60,000 |
|
The Armagh Rhymers Workers Co-Op |
67,000 |
|
The Jigtime Programme |
25,000 |
|
|
346,510 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Venue |
Belfast Festival at Queen's |
100,000 |
and |
Crescent Arts Centre |
147,000 |
Festivals |
Derry Theatre Trust |
165,132 |
|
Feile an Phobail |
123,000 |
|
The Playhouse, Derry |
127,000 |
|
Waterside Theatre |
70,000 |
|
Old Museum Arts Centre |
242,650 |
|
Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival |
100,000 |
|
The Grand Opera House Trust |
492,921 |
|
|
1,567,703 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Visual Arts |
Belfast Exposed Photography |
100,000 |
|
Belfast Print Workshop |
89,019 |
|
Catalyst Arts |
20,000 |
|
Circa Art Magazine |
15,000 |
|
Context Gallery |
39,600 |
|
Factotum |
17,000 |
|
Flaxart Studios |
38,680 |
|
Golden Thread |
107,000 |
|
Orchid Studios Association |
14,523 |
|
Ormeau Avenue Gallery Ltd |
300,000 |
|
Paragon Studios |
24,350 |
|
Portadown 2000 |
51,000 |
|
Queen Street Studios |
31,032 |
|
Seacourt Printworkshop |
50,550 |
|
Source/Photo Works North |
24,000 |
|
The Void Art Centre |
85,000 |
|
Visual Artists Ireland |
27,465 |
|
|
1,034,219 |
|
|
|
Youth |
Cahoots NI Ltd |
79,450 |
|
Kids in Control |
30,000 |
|
Play Resource Warehouse |
64,450 |
|
Replay Productions Ltd. |
112,635 |
|
Sticky Fingers Early Years Art |
63,487 |
|
Ulster Association of Youth Drama |
34,650 |
|
Ulster Youth Choir |
20,100 |
|
Young At Art Ltd |
85,000 |
|
Youth Action Northern Ireland |
25,000 |
|
|
514,772 |
|
|
|
Other |
Audiences Northern Ireland |
212,000 |
|
Tyrone Guthrie Centre |
84,200 |
|
|
296,200 |
|
|
|
|
TOTAL |
9,625,035 |
