Kindness in a time of crisis

We are living through an unprecedented crisis, and the enormity of the challenges it presents to the cultural sector are already very clear. Many of you are having contracts cancelled, or have closed doors that have long stood open.  Some of you, we know, are already asking whether jobs and livelihoods can be saved: over the last week, during which the scale of this disaster has become evident, we’ve had calls from people on the verge of insolvency, confronting the loss of everything they’ve struggled to build. All of us are fearful, and all of us are wondering what the future holds.

But amid this fear, people are demonstrating extraordinary resilience: facing challenges calmly, and making plans to move forward.

At Arts Council England, we’re in the process of adapting, too. Our offices are closed, but we’re still working. We’re listening to your concerns, and we’re moving fast – far faster than a bureaucracy like ours is used to moving – to come up with responses that will support you through this crisis.

Some of these we’ve announced already: For at least 3 months, and with immediate effect National Portfolio Organisations and Creative People and Places programmes will continue to receive funding but funding conditions will not apply, and we will advance grant payments to assist with cashflow where needed. Others we will tell you about in the coming days. But we know that there is more – much more – to do.  We have refocused our effort to work on the fairest and best ways to support every part of the sector – individual people, arts organisations, museums, libraries – all of whom contribute to our country’s creative and cultural life. We’re constantly talking to colleagues in government to share your data on the impacts this emergency is having on you, and what you’ll need to survive it. We’re working with other partners – among them the BBC, whose ‘Culture in Quarantine’ project we’re proud to support – to come up with imaginative solutions to our new reality. Our sole priority is to ensure that our sector is as strong as possible when we come out the other side.

According to the United Nations, there are four key qualities that we should reach for in times of crisis: kindness, generosity, empathy, and solidarity.

Over the last week, it’s these qualities that we at the Arts Council have done our best to live up to. And it’s exactly these qualities that we have seen embodied by the cultural sector, as people and organisations have reached out at speed to support one another. I’ve admired the compassion of organisations such as Leicester’s Curve Theatre and Sage Gateshead, both of which have donated food to local charities, and the creativity of organisations like Sheffield-based publisher & Other Stories, which is setting up a subscription scheme to deliver books to people who are self-isolating, and Plymouth hip-hop company Street Factory, who are offering virtual dance classes through Facebook Live. These are just a handful of examples among many of the outpouring of creativity that this crisis has already begun to generate.

And I want to tell you not simply that such work still matters in the face of an international disaster, but that it matters more than ever. During this time our empathy for one another, our ability to connect, will be critical. We will survive this period by distancing ourselves physically from one another. But by staying connected through our sharing of creativity and culture, and through the communities, virtual as well as physical, that culture creates, we will come out of it stronger.