We have dealt with issues such as adolescent suicide,
intercultural and inter-ethnic tension, racism, sexism, homophobia,
sectarianism across a range of needs around disability, homelessness, dementia,
poverty, social isolation, illiteracy, autism, ADHD, depression, addiction and
hopelessness. We have supported each and every community of place and interest
as best we could, along the way helping to offer a creative foothold to Belfast
Pride, retired PSNI officers, ex-combatant groups and various new community associations
rising from the ashes of conflict. In the mid 2000s we did the first ever demonstration
of Social Return on Investment (SROI) alongside the NOW Project, who run the
Gauge programme now. In that SROI report, at government levels of optimism bias
discounting, we returned £14 for every £1 invested in our programme.
Money from the first round of European Peace Funds, Peace I
as it was styled, was midwife to this programme. Peace I established and
resourced a clear pathway for many on the margins to find a way into the
nurturing centre of this society and see if we could not challenge the status
quo and explore real transformation for all citizens here.
By 2003, we were ready for Peace II and indeed, we
successfully (although it took us 6 months to research and write the
application itself - it stretch to 165 pages!!) gained the single largest award
to community arts on the island at that time of £225,000 for a 2 year
programme. We established 5 major project strands that continue to operate
today and have in themselves seen real lasting development and growth, Poetry
In Motion which hosts the Seamus Heaney Awards, Trash Fashion, Landmarks (Belfast Wheel as it was first known), This
Is Me and Masque. Like many of our peer organisations, we relied on the generous support and
visionary programme establishment of the European Regional Development Fund and
the European Social Fund. We were successfully awarded three more
grants to enable a range of outcomes, from employment and accredited skills
development, to peace-building and active citizenship development.
That support has translated into real, lasting jobs too – our contribution
to the local economy, net, without any social return factored in, has been in order of £3.7 M. Factoring in
SROI, even at a 50% discount means £26M of social return to Northern Irish
society from one small, community arts programme.
Through Culture Europe funding we have worked alongside individuals
and organisations from across Ireland and in Lithuania, Holland, Belgium, and Sweden.
Through Erasmus, we have worked with artists, advocates and academics from
France, Spain, Holland, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Italy, Germany, Syria,
Israel, Portugal and the Czech Republic.
Whilst we sit on a currently sun-drenched island at the
normally rain-soaked western edge of the European Continental Shelf, we have
participated in the richly diverse, outward-looking, progressive and positive
social agenda across a continent of commonality. We have reached across differences and distances
real and perceived that have stretched back hundreds of years, millennia even
and recognised in ourselves the very everyday challenges that face us all in
this part of the world, reflected in the shared experience across a whole
continent. This is the visioning, the outpouring of positivism that true, dynamic,
fundamental change requires. Inward looking, closed and isolated introspection
cannot even begin to offer such a platform for real social development – never mind
the resource to actively engage hundreds of thousands of people. Creative Europe
has a budget of over €1.4 billion until 2020, with the Culture sub programme
commanding almost one third of that amount. That is all additional funding that
does not replace any local budgets.
As the lowest spending region on the arts anywhere in
Europe, struggling to offer 0.025% of GDP in funding support, or less than 80p
for every £1,000 spent, why, as a progressive, creative arts community would we
choose to disqualify ourselves from this financial assistance or for the opportunity to be
a part of a bigger conversation about who we are and where we are going, together?
It’s a good question and one which I know I’ll be answering soon.
I urge everyone to answer as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment