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Sustained theatre & underfunding

This report here makes interesting reading. It is the result of the “Sustained Theatre” consultation in to funding for the non-white sector – perhaps one could call it “black” or “BME” or “minority” but those are all unsatisfactory labels.

I found this part telling:

“… substantial amounts of capital funding over the past 10 years that
have been made available to white mainstream organisations, but not to the
extent it could and should have done for theatre practitioners in The Sector.

The Arts Council had to review radically its approach to distributing Capital
Lottery funds when it emerged that less than 1 per cent of grants allocated across
all artforms had been awarded to arts organisations led by groups categorised
as ‘culturally diverse’. Strategies were developed to address this situation and
these began to bear fruit in the following round of bids – and the percentage rose
to just over 32 per cent.

From 1996 to 2005, the funds allocated by the Arts Council across all artforms
to ‘culturally diverse’ organisations for capital expenditure was £41,739,923. The
total funds allocated during the same period were £994,814,057.
Although it is fair to say that there has been some increase in the number of
Sector-led arts organisations gaining Arts Council financial support, an examination
of the figures for regularly funded organisations, which is at 4.4 per cent for
years 2005/06, demonstrates the extent to which The Sector is still substantially
under-resourced.”

The Sector should have funding to about the tune of 8 to 9% if it were to reflect the UK population.

In London, this figure would be closer to 30%.

Taking the UK stats, this would suggest that the non-white theatre sector has been underfunded to the tune of about £5m a year for the past 10 years ie £50m.

Now Arts funding is already – arguably – underfunded (I say arguably because there’s only so much money to go round health, education, guns etc.) so this make non-white arts doubly underfunded.

If this were a research and development company or any company which needs capital expenditure to grow – this act of underfunding would probably leave it dead in the water.

Draw your own conclusions.

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  • About me

    I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.

  • Recent Work

    Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).

  • Nakamitsu

  • Yellow Gentlemen