Draft Budget 2008-11
- These figures in the Draft Budget 2008-2011 should be looked at in the context of the Arts Council’s own assessment of need for the sector, as was set out in its submission to DCAL for the CSR 2007, entitled ‘The Time for the Arts’.
- In ‘The Time for the Arts’ the Arts Council requested extra funding of £26.9m over the 3-year spending period. This would have placed spending in NI at just under £11.50 per capita, on a par with the rest of the UK. In the draft budget the Arts Council will receive just £4.25m extra, equating to just £7.89 per capita, by year 3.
- The table and graph shows how much funding the arts in Northern Ireland needs, and how much is proposed in the draft budget.
Year |
2007/08 |
2008/09 |
2009/10 |
2010/11 |
Arts Council (ACNI) requested funding |
10.5 |
18.7 |
18.9 |
19.1 |
ACNI funding |
10.5 |
11.0 |
11.25 |
13.5 |
- The accumulated deficit (ie. the difference between what the Arts Council requested and what is budgeted) will be around £22.65m. This could actually be worse if the expected funding level of 2010/11 is reduced – as is possible.
- In the Arts Council’s submission, it laid out the simple financial reasons why funding should be increased by £9m per year:
- NI historically and currently has the lowest level of public investment in the arts for any region in the UK
- The gap in funding between NI and the rest of the UK and Ireland is widening
- 4 previous years of flat-line funding
- The associated accumulated inflationary pressures on arts organisations
- The re-direction of lottery funding which means the Arts in Northern Ireland will lose a further £4.5m (£250,000 more than the Arts Council will receive through the budget increase)
- The people of NI have the same cultural entitlement as people in the rest of these islands