Doing more, for more

The last three months have seen life in England turned upside down. Children taught at home, offices and town centres empty, kitchen tables turned into desks and – of course – our museums, libraries, theatres, galleries, arts centres and music venues shuttered and dark. 

Every community and every part of the economy has faced privation. Here at the Arts Council our job was to move quickly to help the people and places of the creative economy weather this storm and where they could, to keep culture going for the public. 

In many cases they have done both.  In fact, people living under lockdown have seen and heard culture of all kinds presented in new ways by ingenious creatives, from their homes to ours. Artists haven’t only hunkered down, they have reached out and millions of us have seen or joined them in singing, painting, dancing, making and more. In the midst of all this turmoil, we have been amazed, amused and moved by the power of creativity unleashed in our homes. 

We at Arts Council England have done our bit too. We were able, with the help of our funding from Government and the National Lottery, to get emergency grants where they were most needed, so that this could happen. 

Today, we are sharing how we invested the first two of our emergency response funds. And what we learned in the process. Circumstances forced us to strip back our processes to the essentials, to be super flexible and to move quickly. So we were able to provide emergency support not just at speed, but to a wider group of applicants, often in places and from communities who do not receive enough cultural investment. 

We won’t forget these lessons: how to do more, for more, without layers of complexity. They will certainly help us in the future as we bring our ten year strategy Let’s Create into being. I am so proud that we have been able to help, and I am acutely aware that there is more to do. And for us, there are always new lessons to learn. 

What we have given

Thanks to the Government and the National Lottery, we have been able to provide a £160 million package of Emergency Response Funds to help those individuals and organisations most affected survive the summer months.  These grants are being awarded as part of a broader strategy to preserve the cultural sector, helping artists and organisations to survive the immediate cashflow challenges, to continue producing work where possible, and to thrive again.

Today we are announcing the results from the first two rounds of those funds, which cover individual creative practitioners and organisations without a regular funding relationship with the Arts Council.  In total we have invested £64.8 million, with £17.1million allocated to 7,491 individuals and £47.7 million to 2,187 organisations.  We’ve also distributed £4 million to a series of benevolent funds to support cultural sector workers including performers, musicians, stage technicians and conservators.

We have made up to £90 million available for a third round of emergency funding, targeted at National Portfolio Organisations and Creative People and Places consortia.  We will announce the results of this round in July.

Who we have given it to

The people and organisations who have received these grants demonstrate the richness of England’s cultural sector.  They serve villages, towns and cities across the country, and they work across all the artforms we fund.

They also reflect the range of circumstances we have seen in the cultural sector as the crisis has unfolded.  Many are using the funds to pay the bills and to ensure they can open again when the time is right.  Some are putting their grants towards helping their staff adapt to working from home, while others are continuing to produce creative work, exploring ways to overcome the barriers of lockdown and social distancing to reach their audiences and local communities at home. All of these responses are vital to ensuring that we emerge from the crisis with a sector that is strong enough to harness England’s culture and creativity to benefit every one of us.

This point – that we need to make the cultural sector work for everyone – is one that we need to dwell on. The renewed focus in the public consciousness on the need for greater inclusivity has been triggered by appallingly tragic events in the USA and comes against a backdrop of a pandemic that was already disproportionately affecting Black, Asian and minority ethnic people, as well as other marginalised groups such as disabled people.  We must use this renewed impetus to make sure we keep the drive for inclusion and anti-discrimination, in all walks of life, at the forefront of our minds as we move forward.

That applies to our Emergency Response Funds as much as anything else.  £12.9 million of funding has been awarded to people from, or organisations led by people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.  Similarly, £8.9 million has been awarded to D/deaf and disabled people or disabled-led organisations.

We want to do more.  This is just a start, and, as I promised in my previous blog, we will continue to place diversity and inclusion at the heart of our plans as we begin to rebuild.  We will do everything in our power to ensure that the cultural sector is more equitable, more welcoming and more meaningful to people of all backgrounds than the one we knew before.

The future

It has been good to hear from the individuals and organisations who have received an emergency grant.  Many have told us that these funds have helped them to survive a financial shock that may otherwise have damaged organisations and livelihoods beyond repair.

However, our support has sadly not reached everyone, and there is much more that needs to be done if the sector is to survive and thrive once again.  We are now working on the second phase of our crisis planning – stabilisation.  Our aim here is to support cultural organisations to re-emerge in a safe, sustainable way, helping them to adapt their business models to the constraints of lockdown and social distancing.

We continue to work with the Government to ensure that culture and creativity are at the centre of England’s post-crisis recovery, and we are talking to people across the sector to make sure that their voices are a part of that conversation.  We will all need to work together to make the best, united case for investing in art and culture. 

I want to thank our Secretary of State, Oliver Dowden, the Minister for Culture, Caroline Dinenage, and officials at DCMS, DfE and HM Treasury, whose support has been vital in enabling our response to the crisis.  I am also enormously grateful to National Lottery players, who have provided such a large proportion of the Emergency Response Funds.

Finally, I want to thank those of you in the cultural sector.  Throughout the darkness and isolation of the last few months, artists and cultural organisations have doubled down on their commitment to bringing the joy of creativity to the communities they serve. I take heart from knowing that the Arts Council was able to help you do that when the country needed it most.