Don't Scrap the Play Resource Warehouse - a plea and petition

I was genuinely saddened to hear that Bryson House Arts & Play Scrap Store is to close this June.
Because this is not just the loss of a warehouse.

For decades, the Scrap Store at the Play Resource Warehouse has been one of those rare pieces of civic and creative infrastructure that quietly made creativity more accessible. And for a nominal fee or annual membership, teachers, youth workers, artists, arts organisations, community groups and facilitators could walk through its doors and leave with the raw materials for workshops, projects, festivals, school activities, play sessions and ideas that otherwise may never have happened.  And help the planet at the same time. Because we know, not everything needs to be new. 

Part of the quiet brilliance of the Scrap Store was that it challenged the depressingly widespread disposable consumer culture.  It recognised that imagination does not begin with pristine materials arriving in plastic packaging. Often, it begins with remnants, offcuts, unwanted party-favours and promotional objects and the unexpected textures on discarded rolls of wallpaper,  all waiting to be transformed into something else entirely. One person’s recycling became somebody else’s puppet, sculpture, costume, workshop, theatre set, sensory resource or school project.

That was not simply economical. It was imaginative, environmental, sustainable and humane.
And at a time when schools, arts organisations and community groups are already under enormous financial strain, this closure will simply force many people to spend more money on materials they previously could access affordably and sustainably. 

The Scrap Store helped stretch tiny budgets even further. It allowed facilitators, teachers and artists to experiment and create ambitiously without constantly worrying about retail costs. It allowed this creative activity to flourish sustainably - ethically. A tub of plastic bottle tops, or corporate cast-off printed bags would be destined for a melting down or landfill. But in the hands of artists and participants, they represent creative possibilities, underpinned by a quiet, practical education about recycling and reusing materials and things.  In a place where arts, education and community sectors are continually expected to absorb rising costs with diminishing support, resources like this quietly made participation possible. Today, that matters more and more. And for tomorrow, it's absolutely crucial. 

What makes this proposed closure even more striking is how rare places like Play Resource are across these islands. A scattered network of a handful of scrapstores and creative reuse centres exists across Britain. On the island of Ireland there appears to be only one broadly comparable operation remaining: ReCreate in Dublin. Significantly, groups from Dublin reportedly travelled to Belfast years ago to learn from the Play Resource model developed here. Cork has been trying to establish a scrap store for years. 
So this is not some eccentric side project with little relevance beyond a niche audience. It remains, for this month anyway, a pioneering infrastructure that we can ill-afford to lose.

Many in the arts and community sectors will remember previous campaigns more than a decade ago to protect the Play Resource Centre from closure. People rallied then because they understood something important: once infrastructures like this disappear, they are exceptionally difficult to rebuild.
It is also impossible not to think of Anne O’Donoghue at this moment. Anne was instrumental in establishing the Play Resource Warehouse and understood, long before many others did, the extraordinary social, creative and environmental value held within reusing and recycling, participation and making materials sustainable and accessible. Through the Anne O’Donoghue Award, delivered by Community Arts Partnership on behalf of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, that legacy continues to be recognised today. Which perhaps explains why this news lands so heavily for so many people. 
There is also a wider contradiction here that is difficult to ignore. Bryson House, which swept in to assist Play Resource some years ago, publicly states that part of its charitable purpose is promoting:
 “waste reduction, re-use reclamation, recycling, use of recycled products”
and:
“advancing the education of the public about all aspects of waste generation, waste management and waste recycling”.

Meanwhile, Belfast City Council’s cultural strategy, A City Imagining, speaks about “sustaining and strengthening the city’s cultural ecosystem” while recognising “the increasing importance of environmental responsibility to the lives of the people in the city”.

Yet here we are discussing the possible disappearance of one of the clearest practical examples of those principles in action anywhere in Belfast. Because the Scrap Store is not separate from recycling policy or cultural policy. It sits precisely at the intersection of both.

This was circular economy thinking made tangible, on our doorstep:
materials diverted from waste streams and reimagined through education, creativity, play and community participation.

And it raises an important question not only for Bryson, but for Belfast itself.
If substantial public investment already exists around kerbside recycling, waste management and environmental infrastructure, should part of that same civic ambition not involve protecting and strengthening the community reuse initiatives that give those policies real visible value?
Surely one of the strongest demonstrations of a circular economy is not simply collecting waste more efficiently, but enabling communities, schools and young people to creatively transform what would otherwise be thrown away.

There is also a deeper anxiety sitting beneath all of thisWe have seen important specialist community infrastructures struggle over the years, sometimes rescued temporarily through the intervention of larger bodies acting in good faith and under difficult circumstances, only for the original institution or organisation not survive over the longer term. The experience of An Munia Tober , the Travellers' Resource Centre, may inevitably linger in the background for many people involved in community and cultural work here.

That history may also shape how people respond to news like this. Because while the Scrap Store may represent only a relatively small component within the wider machinery of the Bryson Charitable Group operation, its impact extends far beyond its direct operating costs. The value it generates is dispersed across schools, arts organisations, youth services, community groups, facilitators and families throughout Northern Ireland.

And if it disappears, the pressures do not disappear with it. They are simply transferred to sectors already struggling with constrained budgets, rising costs and continuing uncertainty around public investment. Without the scale or experience to make recycling accessible or at all sustainable.
That is why this feels larger than the closure of a single programme. Because creative life does not only depend on major venues and flagship buildings. It also depends on the smaller, less glamorous infrastructures that make participation possible in classrooms, church halls, youth clubs, festivals and community spaces every single week of the year.

Often, it's the things with the lowest profile that end up carrying the widest impact.

I understand fully that organisations like Bryson are operating under immense pressure. Everyone is. But before one of the very few dedicated creative reuse resources on these islands disappears entirely, surely there is value in pausing long enough to ask whether another way forward might still be possible.
Because resources like this do not merely save waste from landfill. They save the idea of sustainable creativity. 

A public petition supporting the Scrap Store is also currently circulating online at change.org
If you wish to express concern regarding the proposed closure of Bryson Arts & Play Scrap Store, you can contact Bryson Recycling

The Arts Matter. 

Fool me twice... expect the worse

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Fool me a third time… just who exactly should feel ashamed now?

Last year I wrote here that in 2024, the funding situation was unprecedented. It was genuinely shocking. In twenty five years working in the arts sector here, I had never known anything like it. Organisations entered a new financial year without Letters of Offer from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. No confirmation of funding. No contracts. No clarity about whether they would even meet the threshold to continue operating.

For a sector that had spent decades professionalising governance, compliance and delivery, the situation was extraordinary.

Then 2025 arrived and it happened again.

By that stage the shock had begun to give way to something else. Concern, certainly. But also a dawning realisation that what had been presented as an anomaly might actually be becoming a pattern.

And now we find ourselves in 2026, speeding towards the end of another fiscal year with April on the horizon.

At this point, the debate about whether the situation is unprecedented, is academic. Once may be misfortune. Twice may be careless as Oscar might have said. But three years in, the real question becomes something else entirely. Expected?

Because in February 2025 the Minister issued a Letter of Expectations to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The implication seemed clear enough. New priorities were being signalled. A tighter, more concerned supervision of the sector would ensue. A revised policy direction for the arts would follow.

And we waited  - in expectation. Sector representatives were subsequently advised in October last year, by the most senior civil servants in charge, that consultation on that policy would begin early in 2026.

Yet here we are.

The Heritage, Culture and Creativity Framework (HCCF) has of course been published (last July in fact, almost a year to the day after we were told to anticipate its development). The indicative budget for DFC was also disclosed and many sent in their consultation documents last year too. The HCC Framework (HCCF) is expansive in tone and somewhat ambitious in its aspirations for the wider cultural landscape. But the specific policy governing the arts sector itself — the framework organisations are actually expected to operate within — remains conspicuously absent.

• There has been no draft policy.
• No consultation
• No timeline.

Which raises a fairly obvious question.

What exactly are we meant to expect now?

Expectations, after all, are not a one-way street. When government outlines expectations for a sector, that sector might reasonably expect something in return: clarity of direction, engagement in shaping policy, and the basic stability required to plan work responsibly.

Instead we have been cautioned not to expect too much from the forthcoming policy itself. It has been suggested that what will emerge will be a policy, rather than a strategy.

In other words, it may describe where government would like the sector to end up, but offer little indication of how that might actually be achieved.

That distinction matters.

A strategy identifies mechanisms, resources, responsibilities and timelines. A policy that simply articulates desirable outcomes without addressing the practicalities of delivery is something rather different. It describes a destination without offering a map. A first class ticket to nowhere if you will.

One might reasonably wonder whether that is what the sector is now expected to organise its future around. A policy that as yet, doesn't exist, despite a gestation of years.

Meanwhile the political calendar is quietly ticking away, becoming more and more audible with each party conference  - the manifestos are being thought about, the rhetoric honed anticipated a bitter campaign in the run up to elections next May.  Anyone familiar with the rhythms of government understands what that implies. Policy development takes time. Consultation takes time. Implementation certainly takes time.

So if consultation on an arts policy has not yet begun, how exactly will it translate into meaningful change before this mandate expires in less than a year? Or should we be relieved that that's the case?

As seems more likely now,  are we drifting toward yet another funding cycle without political direction for the arts?

Into this already uncertain picture comes another remarkable development.

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland itself has now published an assessment outlining what it believes is required simply to stabilise the sector after more than a decade of erosion. Its analysis suggests that restoring baseline sustainability would require an opening investment of £21.27 million for 2026–27, almost double the current baseline allocation.

This is not a casual observation.

Arm’s length bodies do not normally publish such stark assessments of their own funding position. Yet here the Arts Council is effectively acknowledging what organisations and artists have been saying for years: that the system has been operating under sustained pressure since at least 2010, and that without intervention the likely consequences are fewer jobs, reduced programming and diminished reach across communities.

In other words, the infrastructure of the sector is already under massive strain.

And yet the organisations expected to support cultural life across Northern Ireland continue to operate in a policy vacuum.

As I have said before as well, every publicly funded arts organisation here is governed by volunteer trustees carrying legal responsibilities for the charities they oversee. Those trustees are expected to ensure their organisations operate responsibly and manage risk appropriately. In return, they might expect some policy guidance as to how government intends to support them and their cherished creative missions on behalf of their participants, their audinces, their people. 

And while all this inertia and vacuum sucks the air from our lungs, another suggestion has begun circulating.

Some have argued that what artists here really need here is a Northern Ireland version of the Basic Income for Artists scheme currently operating in the Republic. It is an appealing idea. Who would object to giving artists greater financial security (apart from a long and continuing line of civil servants and ministers in NI of course)?

But the comparison is worth noting.

The Republic did not introduce that scheme in isolation. The pilot emerged after years of sustained public investment in the arts, with overall state funding to their Arts Council alone now reaching roughly €140 million annually. The basic income programme itself was introduced within that strengthened ecosystem and has since been made permanent following a really positive evaluation of how it has enabled artists to engage better with that infrastructure. 

In other words, the weekly payments to a couple of thousand artists are not the foundation of Irish arts policy. They are the result of it.

Here in Northern Ireland the situation is rather different. Our funding base has been eroded for more than a decade. Organisations operate with some of the lowest levels of public investment across these islands. The Arts Council itself is now warning that the existing system requires significant uplift simply to remain viable.

Against that backdrop, proposing a basic income scheme here begins to sound less like a policy intervention and more like a policy shortcut. You can't build a roof before laying the foundations. And how many could it actually help? If you developed a comparable scheme, based on a pro-rated per capita basis, you'd have to support about 700 artists, with about £15k a year. That alone would totally eclipse the Arts Council's annual budget here. So, I'm not sure that its even feasible to talk about because at present , with the very foundations of the arts here increasingly uncertain. 

Just to remind you:

• no settled government arts policy, 
• no political delivery strategy, 
• and a sector already operating under sustained financial pressure with another major conflict that threatens to deepen the cost of living crisis, that seems to herald austerity as an ever-present. 

And yet, despite everything, the great work continues.

Artists still create. Organisations still deliver programmes. Communities still participate.

The high-wire act continues, as the fortunes of all sway uneasily. 

But, if you value the arts at all, please recognise that this sector's resilience should not be mistaken for consent. And patience should not be mistaken for meek compliance. Our work is our livelihood. Our work matters to other lives too. 

And after all these years of uncertainty, the sector has just got used to being demoralised, threatened, undermined, ignored and left behind. As our MLAs enjoy a payrise of £14,000 per year, representing £2,000 more than the mean earnings of artists in the North only a few years ago, our political class sit on their hands when it comes to assisting the arts. And soon, as they ratchet up the hyperbole of electioneering, they will be telling us just how important we all are as artists. 

Sigh...

We don't expect much at this point however. 

Just the basics.

A policy that exists.     A strategy that explains how it works.

And a government that understands the difference.                     That would be a start. 

The Arts Matter. 

Creating a Change - Part One: Access - Finding a Way

Twenty-three years ago last month, I had the privilege of becoming the leader of a community arts organisation. I had been working in community contexts for years before, but this was different. This was an almost unique opportunity to help not just define where art and social purpose met — but to make something happen, where our creativity had to prove itself, in the lives and places of people too often left out of the cultural conversation. To make a New Belfast. 

The great, foundational platform of Community Arts Forum, established in 1995 by Martin Lynch and later guided by Heather Floyd, had arrived at a very unique, succinct and elegant way of describing everything that was community arts  - Access, Participation, Authorship and Ownership. I was enchanted not only at the simplicity, but the universality and profundity those 4 words allowed. Those 4 words became everything to me, professionally and artistically, over more than 25 years.  They still guide me today and test my work but they also offer a frame of reference as to how our world has caught up with that vision and perhaps ignored the valuable insights they offered. 

In the years since, Access has come to mean something far more complex than many may first have imagined, but others may have also tried to narrow the definition too. It’s not just about opening doors - it's not just accessibility (which is also central to its meaning) - it’s also about elbowing your way into a discourse and trying to change the structures that decide who gets a key to the door in the first place.

In these next months of blogs , I will try to reframe those four powerful and interconnecting words into a series, to re-examine a quarter of a century of creative determination  -  from above and below - and where we find ourselves today. It's a small reflection of policy and outcomes in my own corner of the sector. 

A New Chapter

As I write, CAP is in motion again — packing boxes, planning moves, negotiating terms and making space for what’s next. Moving premises always makes me think about purpose: what we’ve built, what still matters, and what needs re-imagined.

It always feels like a time of renewal. The CEMENT programme (community, engagement, mentoring, networking and training) is gathering pace, new partnerships are forming, and our move signals more than a change of address — it’s a chance to restate what community arts mean in a society that’s showing its age; fraying at the edges and increasingly fiscally fragile.

Over the months ahead, I’ll use this space to explore what I’ve now come to call the Four A’s: Access, Agency, Authorship and Active Ownership. They describe not just how participation happens, but how creativity becomes social action — how people move from being invited in, to leading, shaping and sustaining the work themselves.

These pieces aren’t manifestos so much as reflections from practice — part memory, part provocation — written as we seek to settle into a new home and a new phase. My hope is that they’ll help clarify where we stand, and how community arts can keep acting as a small but vital force for renewal. And to invite others to carry that momentum forward. 

I had been working in community and development contexts for years before — in neighbourhoods, even countries, where creativity was often the only bright light left on — but running an organisation was different.

I began to understand Access not as a gesture or an outcome to report, but as a lifelong act of translation: between policy and people, between those who hold resources and those who hold stories, between the rhetoric of inclusion and the lived reality of connection.

So Access is not just another noun, nor another verb — it's something you do, and keep doing. It’s what happens when you see an opportunity that doesn’t yet exist and set about creating it. In Northern Ireland and everywhere else, that act of creation has always been political (big or small 'p'), even when it doesn’t look like it. That was the powerful beauty and elegant ignition of Martin Lynch’s vision for community arts here. 

We live in a place where the divisions of history overlap with the inequalities of disadvantage; where the peace walls and the dole queues often trace the same terrain. To speak about Access in such a context is to confront the deep architecture of exclusion: not just who gets to participate, but whose imagination is resourced, whose future is planned for. And that ‘them and us’, is as vertical as it is horizontal. It isn’t about two traditions, but it isn’t not about them either, if that makes sense. It's about more and much less.

When I started at New Belfast Community Arts in 2000, access began as inclusion. But it soon translated as intervention. Today still, when government systems fail to provide even the basics — when NHS waiting lists stretch into years, when teachers are patching windows with cardboard to keep classrooms draught-free; then the idea of access to culture becomes a test of what we still believe a public life should really be.  Access becomes a mirror, reflecting who and what we are prepared to leave behind. It measures not only how many people attend a workshop or exhibition, but the moral reach of our institutions - our willingness to imagine rights as something that must be shared, not rationed.

When communities remain under-served decade after decade, this is not a bureaucratic oversight; it is a declaration of priorities. At a time when our Programme for Government is titled ‘Doing What Matters Most’, the implication is easy to read. The pattern of exclusion reveals our values far more truthfully than any governmental plan.

As the great Raymond Williams put it, “Culture is ordinary: that is where we must start.”

Access, in that spirit, asks whether our cultural systems have really started there — with the ordinary, the overlooked, the unheard, the marginal...the other.

Much of my working life therefore has been spent in translation: between the communities we serve, the artists we support and the policymakers who struggle to serve them all.

Every funding application, every consultation, every partnership is a small act of reinterpretation: taking the language of governance, the funder, the policy, and turning it toward human experience.

That’s what access work often looks like - unglamorous, iterative, sometimes exhausting. That there is the spirit of community arts.

It’s the art of converting intention into possibility, of finding the gaps in the system and quietly widening them until someone else can step through. There is a kind of grace in that persistence, but also a cost. I am lucky that I get to witness the graciousness of community artists’ generosity and impact all the time. Part of my role as an advocate is to sometimes live between two worlds: one that speaks in metrics, and one that voices need. The trick is not to let the first silence the second. And if one parrots the language of the neoliberal, one needs to be vigilant not to adopt their grammar. 

That’s why Williams still matters to me. In Resources of Hope, published after his death, he wrote that “to be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.” Those words feel like a quiet manifesto for community arts - the work of making hope possible, not through slogans, but through the steady building of pathways into creativity.

Access can be imagined as a threshold - once taken, everything can change. For CAP, access has always meant shaping and supporting the pathway beyond: lobbying for changes in policy, reframing funding, and reinterpreting opportunities for “participation” so that it means genuine authorship can flourish. After that, some stakehold is established, the legacy of ownership. All of which I'll offer my take in future posts.

Access is not about bringing people into "our world of the arts", that's the grab-hold language of ‘outreach’. It’s about expanding that world until it already includes them all. That’s why this work can’t be detached from questions of social justice, economy, or belonging.

When we talk about access, we are talking about redistribution; of resources, of visibility, of equity. We are talking about cultural democracy not as an aspiration, but as infrastructure: the connective tissue of a society that still believes in itself. 

Another great foundational quote from Williams is that “the test of a true democracy is not how it speaks to the powerful, but how it listens to the ordinary.”

I think about that often. The “ordinary” here have endured extraordinary things; from the grinding marginalisation of socio-economic disadvantage, to the inheritance of trauma from previous generations, to the hateful ‘othering’ of communities struggling for an equitable foothold in this place.

Yet in every community we work with, I see imagination at work: stubborn, generous, resourceful, talented - surviving against the odds. That is where access resides too... not with policy documents but with the quiet courage of people still willing to make and share meaning together. That is culture.

In a time when so much feels broken - when public life itself seems to be unravelling with every stark warning of loss, cuts and closure - with every bewidering technological broadens a digital divide - Access also becomes an act of faith. Faith in the idea that creativity is not what we reach for when life improves, but part of how we actually improve life. Faith in the idea that democracy is not only a vote, but a voice - and that every act of making, however small, is a rehearsal for that voice being heard.

So, when we speak about Access now, we should mean possibility. We should mean the stubborn refusal to accept that austerity should extend to the imagination. Access is not just the beginning of the process; it’s the measure of our cultural democracy and the test of our civic hope.

PS We had a great initial session of ReImagining Arts Advoacy on the 10th October at QUB Centre for Ethnography, with my comrades Sara Walmsley and Mairead Duffy and host of others. More to come on that...

April Fools, 2025

April 1st. The day of fools. But for Northern Ireland’s arts sector, April Fools’ Day has lost all novelty—it’s just another date on the calendar when absurdity takes centre stage.

Today marks the beginning of the new financial year. Not a single annually funded arts organisation has received a Letter of Offer from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. No one even knows if they met the threshold to receive funding. We are now officially into a new working year with not a penny of funding in place, no contracts signed, no safety net, no core support from our principal funder - just a hope that something might land in the inbox before insolvency kicks in, or the protective redundancy notices get sent.

Last year, this situation was unprecedented. It was truly shocking. In 25 years, I’d never known such an instance.  Bear in mind that in that quarter of a century, the arts have professionalised massively here. And the whole area of applied creativity is so embedded in every facet of publicly funded arts services right across the country.  But for this to happen again - this year, with all we know, with all we have said, with all the evidence that we continue to lay out? That’s not just alarming any more ; it’s absurd. Who was it that said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” That’s right, apparently the same fellow who said “Not everything that counts can be counted.” Go figure Einstein!

Given the year we’ve just had, what’s the strategy to take things forward? The Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s 10-Year Strategic Plan, 2024–34 - which had only recently been developed through extensive consultation and which has guided every funding application over the past year, seems to have been effectively pushed aside. Now, whatever you may feel about such strategies , we all need parameters to work within, especially when we anticipate gaining investment from the hard-pressed public purse. And we know that despite that corporate language and the objectives, this is intended to support the creative sector here and all that flows from that. But that sectoral engagement and those ambitions have seemingly been overwritten by just a few lines in a ministerial statement and a Letter of Expectations. And when you compare the broad, ambitious aims of the ACNI strategy - supporting artistic excellence, inclusion, sustainability, and access across all communities - with the minister’s rather minimalist declaration and somewhat vague expectations, whilst the contrast in presentation could not be starker, there seems to be so much alignment in the substantive priorities and direction: wellbeing, inclusion, community engagement, creative participation, and collaboration. So why, then, the realignment? Why the implication that what we have all been doing over the years has somehow failed, when the strategic direction of travel already broadly matches? Priorities such as widening participation, enhancing inclusion, fostering innovation, and contributing to wellbeing are present in both. Given this alignment, it is reasonable to ask: why introduce ambiguity, risk, and delay when the means to deliver those objectives are in place? 

And, if that isn’t the case, what is? Where is the ministerial strategy for the arts… what's the timeline?

Meanwhile, our Programme for Government, for what it's worth, talks of wellbeing. Of tackling inequality. Of cross-departmental collaboration. Of investing in people, place, and opportunity. But how does it square with the fact that not one arts organisation knows if it can keep its staff, deliver its projects, or even pay the electricity bill?

What’s more, every publicly funded arts organisation in this country is governed by unpaid trustees, (directors and board members), whose own personal liability is the guarantee that underpins all these charities. And all publicly-funded arts organisations are charities, with objectives approved by the government, to carry out fundamentally beneficial support to our society. Each and every one of them. Its volunteers who offer oversight to them, who are charged with the responsibility to ensure that their charities are run safely and compliantly. What do these people do today, as a whole sector holds its breath…again? Do they have reserves? Is it too risky to operate a charity in this situation, with no surety about anything? Should their risk registers light up red across the board? At what point do these organisations fall foul of charitable legislation around illegal trading? Is this the way good governance works or do those politically charged with supporting the arts bear some responsibility too?

The PfG talks more about enabling sectors to flourish. It talks about innovation, creative industries, skills development, cultural inclusion, and mental health. It gestures toward a vision of a joined-up, vibrant society. But on the ground? The people delivering all that vision: the organisations, volunteers, artists, facilitators, and communities, what do they get?

Yes, this April Fools day, just who are the fools? It's us isn’t it?

Because we are asked to believe. To trust that funding will come, with no guarantee it will. That a strategy is coming. That investment is on its way. Are we deluded? 

Despite it all, the sector endures. It adapts. Perhaps foolishly, it still shows up. But let’s not mistake that faltering resilience for consent. Let's not pretend that the sector's determination is a vote of confidence in all this. People have mortgages, dependents and families, responsibilities… and loads of skill and ambition.

Elsewhere in the UK, investment in culture is being ramped up. Grand announcements. Real money. Concrete commitments. Here? We’re still waiting …

So again: are we the fools?

The ones who still perform on the high wire—with no safety net in place, only protective redundancy notices waiting in the wings? The ones who must keep their balance while the ground beneath them shifts unpredictably? 

The minister first announced “new priorities” back in July 2024. It’s now April 2025. So:

Where is the strategy?

When will we see a draft?

Who has been consulted in its development?

When will the statutory consultation begin?

And what will the timeline be for implementation?

Because if this drags on, we may well find ourselves at the end of 2025, once again facing a December deadline for annual funding applications without a coherent strategy to apply to… And what then? Will it be the same next year? Will this whole sector be asked to suspend disbelief again and accept this narrative, this continuing drama?

And why, having refined so many multiple cultural strategies, reports, and consultative frameworks (culminating in the ground-breaking cross-departmental co-designed Investing in Creative Delivery 2023, which took two years and involved expert input from all corners of culture arts and heritage sectors), does government continue to rewrite the script? Why, when representatives and leaders responded to the challenge and have co-designed and collaboratively developed expressing articulately, objectively, just where culture, arts and heritage are and how they can be better supported, why is all that being sidelined, as we wait for piecemeal strategies, one for the arts, one for culture… all apparently coming soon? 

I recall being at a meeting, way back in 2003, where representatives from across those self-same sectors bemoaned the fact that we continued to have work in silos instead of recognising how interconnected our processes could become and how much more effective our collective creative and community facing support could be. That was 22 years ago. As glaciers recede at a frightening pace across the globe, we can no longer point to their incremental pace…Culture and arts and heritage don't live in isolation  - they live in schools, in hospitals, in youth centres, businesses, in streets and city halls, old people's residential care, as well as theatres, pubs, institutions, museums, libraries, tourist attractions…They underpin who we are and what we do. They are interconnected. They are the very basis of how we see ourselves and how we let others see us. 

And the ministerial Letter of Expectations of February this year, talks about respect, pointedly saying that funding must not support anything “disrespectful of any tradition.” What does that mean? Is it disrespectful to our tradition of making art in our community, our long established customs of supporting truly ground-breaking arts organisations and artists, to now further destabilise the work we do, the work we have shown to be exemplary, compliant with all existing ambitions and objectives; produced year on year despite the worst levels of under-investment in these islands for decades? Does that constitute respect? Is it respectful to the communities of interest, practice or place, communities on the very margins of society, and our artists and artisans, musicians and facilitators, or those whose ethnicity or perhaps disability creates even more obstacles to participate in the cultural life of this place… does it show respect for all our collective traditions and ambitions to have everyone hold their breath, performing a high wire act without a safety net?

Are artists meant to tiptoe quietly around everyone and everything; every interpretation of identity, history, or society? Has the traditional role of art making changed? And if we are to be told that it has, how do we respond? Will we be informed just how in the new strategy? 

And yet, across the water, in Westminster, Jennie Lee’s legacy from 1948 is being invoked again. Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for DCMS, speaks of arts everywhere, of £270 million in new funding, of a renewed cultural compact with communities. Fit-for-purpose infrastructure. A vision of culture embedded in everyday life. A moment of renewal for citizens of …well not here. Because let’s be absolutely clear - UK arts policy has no impact in Northern Ireland. These announcements don’t trickle down or across. Even when there is a Barnett consequential, would we see any of that additional money that represents that hope of renewal? No,  the funding gets swallowed up in the Northern Ireland block grant, never to be ring-fenced or invested in our local cultural infrastructure. Not a penny of that cultural succour is guaranteed for any artist or organisation, or venue here. Or has there been a statement in that regard that I foolishly missed? Unfortunately, no, there hasn’t. 

So whilst we might applaud the creative ambition of “across the water”, we are not even an audience…just bystanders. 

So maybe that’s the ultimate April Fool’s, beyond the joke. That we keep going. That we do it for love, for community, for passionate belief. That we somehow convince ourselves that holding it all together is enough, is a necessity turned virtue. But is it? The definition of resilience is not being overwhelmed. 

So no, perhaps we shouldn’t smile politely through this one, on this April Fool’s Day…

Five Years On: locking down

March 2020 was a time of huge uncertainty. Information was conflicting, government advice was unclear, and the arts sector—like many others—was left wondering how best to proceed. As CEO of Community Arts Partnership, I found myself facing a difficult decision: whether to wait for official mandates or to act pre-emptively to protect staff, artists, and the communities we served. I consulted our board and impressed on them the urgency I felt. 

We decided to close our doors before government restrictions were enforced. It was not an easy decision. The weight of responsibility was immense, and there was no precedent for a crisis of this magnitude. Where some in the contemporaneous media questioned whether it was necessary, for me and our staff and board, we expressed relief, understanding quickly and sympathetically the seriousness of the situation. That early decision to shut down all direct contact work marked the beginning of a long and challenging road.

Closing the doors was just the first step. The immediate challenge was figuring out how to keep things going in a world that had suddenly shifted online. The scramble to adapt was chaotic: staff members had to set up home offices overnight, artists needed to find new ways to engage with their audiences, and community groups—many of whom relied on face-to-face interaction—had to adjust to digital platforms that were unfamiliar and, in many cases, inadequate for the kind of work they did.

Some aspects of the transition worked better than expected. Digital meetings and collaborative tools became lifelines, allowing work to continue in a way that wouldn’t have been possible even a decade earlier. But there were also gaps. Not all projects could be transferred online, and for some artists, the shift to digital engagement meant an immediate and perilous loss of income and opportunity. We found ways to support. We signposted and we filmed; we edited, we zoomed and then we zoomed some more. The shift wasn’t just logistical; it had a profound emotional and psychological impact on everyone involved. And for the very vulnerable, it meant trying our very best to offer some continuity. 

With everything in flux, maintaining financial stability was of course a critical concern. Arts organisations faced an existential crisis, with many fearing they would not survive. Many artists went into freefall. The government response provided some relief: Northern Ireland received £33 million from the UK’s £1.57 billion Cultural Recovery Fund, which provided emergency grants to many. But it was understandably and regrettably slow. The Culture, Arts & Heritage Recovery Taskforce was established in May 2021 to oversee the sector’s reopening and long-term recovery. These interventions helped sustain many organisations through the worst of the crisis, but they were not a panacea, even if they had all been realised. And for a sector that was already struggling with decades of systemic underinvestment, artists bore the brunt of it. And so they left, or took any job to get by, or went to ground, unhappy, isolated and alone. 

For us in CAP, securing funding meant constant engagement with funders and policymakers, making the case for why community arts mattered even more in a pandemic. Some programmes had to be adapted or scaled back, while others found new life in digital formats. The efforts of the sector were so evident, but so was the vulnerability. 

What began as an emergency measure gradually became a long-term reality. Remote work, once seen as a temporary solution, became an embedded part of how arts organisations function. Even as restrictions eased, many aspects of remote working remained, changing the nature of collaboration and engagement. Even this year, after five years, some of the remote still remains. 

The shift had both positive and negative consequences. On the one hand, it has allowed for greater flexibility, reduced travel time, and enabled wider participation in meetings, workshops and events. On the other, it led to the loss of physical creative spaces, disrupted all the informal networking opportunities, all the chats and craic, and left some artists and many communities feeling utterly isolated, burnt out and vulnerable. The community arts sector, which thrives on in-person interaction, had to find new ways to build connections and foster collaboration.

Beyond the logistical and financial challenges, there was an even greater toll: the human cost. The pandemic took lives. Friends, colleagues, and community members were lost. Not necessarily to Covid 19 but those remote funerals became the only option for so many, stripping away the opportunity for collective mourning and leaving many with that grief unresolved. It also completely shifted school age kids towards even more screen time, on their own or at least, alone in an online connected labyrinth. Many still haven't bounced back from the isolation, the torturous home-schooling and lack of contact with peers and friends. For a great many, the effect of the pandemic will be felt for many years yet. 

The impact of these losses was profound, and the sense of isolation only made it harder to process. Our work in the arts, which is built on relationships and shared experiences, had to navigate not just professional challenges but that deep personal challenge. Even now, five years since it all started, we can all still sense the echoes of that grief and loss. Standing outside, apart.

Looking back, the decision to close down face to face work ahead of government mandates was the right one. It prioritised the health and safety of those we served, even if it came at a cost. It kept vulnerable staff members safe too. But no one knew how long it would all take and while many just lashed out at anything and everything, the careful and considerate took a beat and kept on working.

The pandemic may have indeed forced a re-evaluation of how arts organisations operate, highlighting the sheer immense vulnerability that we all share in times of crisis, but it also put us more in touch with those people and communities already challenged by health issues or those already struggling on the margins. The exacerbation of every deficit and difficulty was the pandemics long lasting price.

Where some aspects of the sector have recovered, others remain in flux. Face to face working is more prized than ever but while digital engagement has reshaped how many work, it has also become way more complicated and indeed, unsure. Spam, junk, scams, clones. They’re all more dangerously rampant than ever now . And AI seems to have only accelerated the level of level of everything - albeit washed in lazy computer generated platitudes and inaccuracies. Reaching out? Please, get a grip!

Remember building back fairer (never mind better, which was a forlorn hope, dashed hopelessly early). As the emergency funds are a thing of the past and everyone is fighting for funds from every possible avenue, the question now is not just how we rebuild, but how we ensure that the lessons of the past five years are not forgotten. How do we create a more sustainable, adaptable, and inclusive arts sector when there is little by way of new investment? How, when the arts have been summarily de-prioritised by our central government in the Assembly's PfG and replaced with top down short term missives about new priorities without any new monies, how do we survive, never mind grow? And how do we honour those that worked so hard and gave so much, at personal and often professional cost, along the way? Five years on, there are more questions than answers. The arts did matter…they should still. 

The NI Assembly's new Programme for Government believes the arts don’t matter at all

 

The Assembly believes the arts don’t matter – we have to tell them that it does!

(An immediate response to the draft Programme for Government 2024-2027, titled "Our Plan: Doing What Matters Most")

The NI Assembly believes the arts don’t matter ... 

The draft Programme for Government 2024-2027, titled "Our Plan: Doing What Matters Most", published on the 9^th September, shows the struggle that is underway to save the arts in N Ireland. This draft PfG primarily focuses on economic recovery, public health, education, and infrastructure, with absolutely no explicit mention of direct investment or initiatives to support the Culture, Arts, and Heritage sector. This egregious omission has set off alarm bells across a sector that has enjoyed only neglect, underinvestment and a reduction in living/working standards caused by 13+ years of austerity on the part of the Assembly and government departments.  Bear in mind that these sectors, culture arts and heritage, have just completed two major pieces of work in ministerial taskforces, producing firstly a cogent plan for the recovery through the Covid crisis and then latterly, a Culture arts and heritage Strategy completed in 2022, with scores of organisations and their leaders taking part.

Whilst the stark absence of any references to culture and heritage shouldn't necessarily mean these sectors will be neglected entirely, but given bitter experience and the catchy title of the draft pfg “Doing What Matters Most”, it is evident what government now thinks – that creativity and culture are definitely not priorities and essentially do not matter in this society.  This lack of visibility in the stated core governmental priorities begs questions about the ongoing support of these sectors in the next government funding cycles and ultimately, the sustainability of arts and culture in this corner of the globe...

The draft PfG does manage to set out a broad framework for public policy, and its undoubtedly possible that specific initiatives might emerge through funding schemes, possibly through departmental budgets such as tourism or education, but to reduce even the editorial commitment to culture, arts and heritage, is yet another body blow to a sector that has been pummelled for a decade or more and now sees its value not noted ONCE in a draft programme for government. Unbelievable!

As a sector, we must coalesce around a determination to place the arts and culture at the heart of society and seize this consultation process, running from September to November 2024, to press government for stronger representation in policy and commitments to fund our sector sustainably in the finalised pfg.

The 2024-2027 PfG “Our Plan: Doing What Matters Most” shows massive divergence from earlier pfg’s regarding the role of the arts.

1. 2016-2021 Programme for Government

In the 2016-2021 PfG, culture, arts, and heritage were explicitly recognised as critical to Northern Ireland's identity, social cohesion, and economic development. Specific outcomes relating to these sectors included:

• Outcome 5: Emphasised "a more creative society," with a direct commitment to supporting the arts as a means of fostering innovation, creativity, and inclusion
• Investment in Culture: Funding and strategic initiatives targeted cultural projects, aiming to enhance Northern Ireland’s cultural offering as part of its tourism and international appeal. The recognition of the arts as a driver for tourism and economic regeneration was clear in the 2016-2021 document.
• Community and Cohesion: Arts and heritage were also tied into improving community relations and reducing division. Initiatives were often designed to support cultural expression as a form of healing from the legacy of the Troubles, with government-funded programmes aimed at both promoting Northern Ireland’s heritage and fostering dialogue across communities

But now in contrast… 

2. 2024-2027 Programme for Government

The current draft PfG for 2024-2027 makes absolutely no direct mention of culture, arts, or heritage as priorities in its key outcomes. This lack of explicit focus on the sector marks a worrying departure from previous government programmes and signals an unambiguous threat to the sustainability of these sectors:

• Reduced Visibility: While the previous PfG (2016-2021) included a specific outcome tied to creativity and the arts, the 2024-2027 draft shifts attention to broader societal goals like economic recovery, health, and environmental sustainability without any reference to arts, culture or heritage. This is itself is remarkable, but all the more so if one remembers the crisis in race relations continue to reverberate locally for a society that is still emerging from conflict.
• Post-Pandemic Priorities: The new draft is heavily focused on rebuilding the economy and health services after the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, cultural funding has been further deprioritised. Bear in mind that only last year, culture arts and heritage leaders spent months working on a ministerial taskforce to address these concerns, and develop a strategy, and yet that vision is now cast aside completely. The clear message to be heard by our sector is that neither our input, nor the industry that works across all sections of our community, employing thousands, matters.

3. Potential Impacts

• Funding Concerns: The absence of explicit goals for arts and heritage in the 2024-2027 PfG raises immediate concerns about further and perhaps more profound funding cuts. While earlier versions of the PfG linked cultural initiatives to tourism and economic strategies, the current draft shifts away from these linkages, severing what had been a clear strategic initiative ( and one of course that is employed by neighbouring jurisdictions to global and national effect.)

• Consultation Opportunity: The ongoing consultation process offers a chance for stakeholders in the culture, arts, and heritage sectors to push for stronger representation and clearer funding commitments in the final version of the PfG​

 

The PfG 2024-2027 marks a clear shift away from the explicit support for culture, arts, and heritage seen in the 2016-2021 iteration. While the previous PfG recognised the arts as a key driver for social cohesion and economic growth, the current draft lacks any direct references to our sector.

When comparing the 2024-2027 draft PfG with previous versions, in terms of culture, arts, and heritage, key trends emerge:

1. Reduction in Visibility of Arts and Culture: In earlier iterations, particularly those from 2011-2015, cultural heritage, linguistic diversity (e.g., Irish and Ulster Scots), and the promotion of arts as community development tools were explicitly addressed. For example, the PfG for 2011-2015 emphasised celebrating cultural and linguistic diversity and included actions related to the provision of resources for Irish medium education, respect for ethnic minority traditions, and cultural participation by disabled and elderly citizens. The emphasis was not only on supporting these sectors but also promoting inclusivity across communities. 

2. Cultural and Economic Development Links:

The 2016-2021 PfG made stronger links between culture, arts, and economic goals, framing the creative industries as contributors to the regional economy. There was an effort to tie arts and cultural activities into broader social outcomes, including mental health improvement and community cohesion.

Whilst arts purists may have baulked at the time and complained of social engineering and instrumentalism, the arts aren’t even mentioned now.

However, by 2024-2027, while the framework continues to promote community well-being, there is a complete absence of specific policies or any stated commitments aimed directly at the arts and cultural sectors.

3. Broad Social and Economic Focus:

This latest draft of the PfG, primarily focuses on broader economic, health, and educational outcomes, with culture and arts having no explicit role in this strategic overview, where the arts and cultural sectors have explicitly, constantly and consistently supported these areas.

The arts contribution to the UK economy (evidenced in figures around GVA and GDP) leverages huge benefit when compared to the comparatively low level of investment. N Ireland contributes hugely to this leverage. 

Similarly, the impact of the arts on mental, emotional and physical health has been proven and charted again and again in community and health settings.

As for education – how many successful engagements has the sector carried out in just the last few weeks, never mind consistently, year on year,  across our schools, community centres and centres of learning.

The new framework offers no role for cultural and artistic contributions as key enablers of societal progress, and will undoubtedly lead to further reductions in funding if this is not addressed coherently, cogently and across

This approach by the Northern Ireland government suggests that while earlier programmes may have recognised the intrinsic value of culture and arts and indeed how that value might be applied, the more recent iterations only prioritise measurable economic and social outcomes, the reductive neo-liberal framework that can only count beans.

Our sector and all who have benefited from it over the years, must fight back before we are swept away.

Let’s compare the so-called ‘Doing What Matters Most’ programme with that of our near neighbours in the Republic of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland for a moment. 

Just a brief scan around reveals so much.

As I’ve said, here amongst our ministers and their departments in the North/Northern Ireland there is now a marked absence of any explicit reference to the culture arts and heritage sectors. While general public spending is discussed, cultural investment does not appear anywhere, leaving the status of ongoing or new initiatives in the arts and heritage sectors completely unclear and worryingly absent. This contrasts sharply with approaches in the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

Republic of Ireland:

Cultural policy in the Republic is highly evolved and painstakingly consulted upon and developed. It is always integrated into broader governmental priorities. Through frameworks like Culture 2025, the Irish government places culture at the heart of public policy, recognising its importance for social cohesion, identity, and economic development. This all-of-government programme aims to integrate creativity into public policy, touching on key areas such as Creative Youth, Creative Communities, and cultural health and well-being. Moreover, the Irish government has committed to doubling its funding for arts and culture from 2017 levels by 2025.

The Creative Ireland Programme (2017-2022) further emphasises key pillars such as enabling creativity in children, investing in cultural infrastructure, and promoting Ireland globally as a hub for cultural and creative industries. Culture 2025 also commits to doubling public funding for culture by 2025 and has extensive support for Irish language, biodiversity, and creative industries.

Scotland

Although constantly in the news for the wrong reasons around funding over the last months, The Scottish Government consistently highlights the importance of culture through its A Culture Strategy for Scotland (2020), which underscores culture’s role in fostering individual and community wellbeing. Like the ROI, Scotland commits significant investment into creative industries, cultural participation, and heritage conservation and even in light of sever funding pressures, has sought to maintain that commitment. A key element is that culture is seen as a critical element for achieving Scotland's National Outcomes, with funding provided to both national institutions and community-level arts initiatives.

Wales

In Wales, our most comparable neighbour in terms of previous funding frameworks (although enjoying twice the funding level per capita) , Wales enjoys a cultural agenda that is similarly well-supported through policies such as Cultural Recovery Fund for arts and culture sectors and the Wales’ Well-being of Future Generations Act (2015). This places culture and heritage as essential to well-being, sustainability, and national identity. There is a strong commitment to safeguarding the Welsh language and promoting heritage tourism, with substantial investment in national museums, heritage sites, and creative industries.

In contrast, Northern Ireland’s PFG says NOTHING… it does not outline even one specific cultural funding commitment or initiative!

It’s clear that policy makers and indeed citizens in neighbouring countries, (who by the way already enjoy cultural investment many times greater than the level of funding here) understand that public investment is critical in supporting a far greater sense of national identity, civic participation, community wellbeing and of course, global recognition of the cultural wealth of these nations. Their governments have consistently embraced culture arts and heritage as a huge driver of national benefit in a multiplicity of settings and relationships, from local community through to international relations.   

Northern Ireland’s current PFG lacks any comparable commitment.

For any contemporary nation to ignore culture, arts and heritage and excise all mention from a document entitled “Doing What Matters Most” speaks volumes about how out of step and utterly myopic our collective government is. 

Ministers chorus “Our Plan” but its disregards the most basic elements that make society, that makes this place tick – the reasons that we think as we do, the humanity that underpins our language and our interactions, the creativity that we must harness for our collective future and the very essence of how we reflect ourselves today and everyday!

To deny the arts is to undermine any attempt to support our collective quality of life, for citizen or state, child or institution, us’ns and them’uns. 

We must push back and not just for the thousands of jobs in this sector, but for the inalienable right of all of us to enjoy the benefits of a cultural life and participate in our society.

ArtsMatterNI offers its resources, platform and collective intelligence to fight back against this casting aside of our sector's role and respond robustly and collectively to this dismissal of our role. 

https://www.artsmatterni.co.uk/

Contact us on artsmatterni @ gmail . com and let's do this... 

The Arts Matter.  NOW MORE THAN EVER

Best

Conor Shields