ACNI report provides evidence of immediate need for a support fund for artists
5 August 2021
The Arts Council was asked by the Department for Communities (DfC) to collate evidence demonstrating the impact of Covid-19 emergency funding for individual artists in 2020/21, and to evidence the need for sectoral support funding right now. The Arts Council worked with DfC and with the ministerial Cultural Recovery Task Force group and has today published the Evidencing Need report.
The evidence demonstrates that there is immediate financial insecurity for those working in the creative industries and that career and skills development have been detrimentally affected. There is significant risk that the talent pool of artists and creatives, necessary for the overall creative ecosystem, will leave Northern Ireland to find alternative work; this will take the sector years to recover from.
The report concludes that the £13m additional support from the UK Government will meet only some of the need, and should be released through grant programmes to the sector as a matter of urgency.