Community
Arts Partnership has always delivered its projects and core support
despite consistent pressures on budgets and available resources.
As a sector, community arts has always
punched above its weight, achieving incredible participation figures,
startling projects and programmes and tens of thousands of new creative
recruits.
At a moment when public funding is being
put under increasing pressure, and with the only ring-fenced budgets
being the health and education portfolios, it seems that the time is
fast approaching when the arts will see the teeth of this funding bite.
If budgets are to be cut, and it seems
somewhat inevitable, it is all the more ironic that arts organisations
supporting those most marginalised by economic, social, physical or
intellectual circumstance, should see their budgets at risk, especially
when that money is needed to pay a fine relating to Welfare Reform, a
process that many user groups supported by community arts organisations
oppose.
We hear daily, the upbeat economic
assessment of UK government ministers and economists, yet locally we are
met with cuts and the promise of less funding this year, next year,
without any hope of this situation improving. The lights are going out.
There’s a fine of £87,000,000, rising to £114,000,000 next year that our
Finance Minister insists must be met. So, as we enter another period of
uncertainty with public funding of services once again threatened with
further cuts, what should we do, collectively?
For the arts community, which has seen
the promise of stability and sustainability in long term funding, never
quite materialise, it is worrying. In recent years, all exchequer funded
organisations have shifted to support the twin ministerial initiatives
of tackling poverty and social exclusion and promoting equality. At the
forefront have been community arts organisations.
CAP has delivered the vast majority of
its community programme either with groups from the most disadvantaged
20% of earners, or from those with physical or intellectual disability,
or indeed with children and young people. Often, groups represent all of
these circumstances. We support ethnic minority groups, and
increasingly we are developing programmes for older people with dementia
and Alzheimer’s disease.
CAP will survive cuts, and struggle
through next year with less again. But should the least disadvantaged be
further penalised? Should priorities to protect such groups and
initiatives not be looked at? Or should those who often receive the
least, be forced to take less again?
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