Arts Council England is pleased to have collaborated with the New Deal of the Mind on a report, which was published on 24 July 2009.

Do it yourself: cultural and creative self-employment in hard times provides research and analysis to inform thinking about opportunities for young self-employed creative people and the potential implications of the government’s Future Jobs Fund.

The report was commissioned as part of the our collaboration with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Department for Work and Pensions to explore how arts organisations might access the Future Jobs Fund, and to ensure that the scheme is the best it can be for the arts.

Arts organisations have been keen to play their part in the Future Jobs Fund, seeing the arts as a creative driver to recovery. We have worked with our regularly funded organisations to canvass their level of interest and facilitate their involvement in the fund.

This is part of a wider programme of Arts Council-sponsored work on the development of the arts workforce and progression routes into it. We are actively supporting Creative and Cultural Skills in the development of the National Skills Academy, aimed at improving the skills of the performing arts sector and increasing the number of arts organisations recruiting apprentices.

We are also committed to encouraging broader engagement of the arts sector in apprenticeships, including through a cohort of regional advocacy pilots.

This, in turn, complements our Action on recession programme, aimed at helping to sustain the arts sector through recession.

This programme includes the Sustain grant scheme and an arts funding stream that supports the government’s Town Centres Initiative – a £500,000 fund of our Lottery income to which artists will be able to apply for grants to help them carry out artistic activities in empty shops made available to them through the scheme.

The report published here will be used by the Arts Council and the New Deal of the Mind to stimulate discussions with the arts sector, stakeholders and opinion formers on potential ways to stimulate opportunities for young self-employed artists.