Mayor Livingstone announces £1.4m fund for capital’s arts

Published Tuesday 11 March 2008 at 16:20 by Lalayn Baluch

London mayor Ken Livingstone has announced a £1.4 million boost for the city’s cultural industry in a bid to help sustain creative activity in the capital in the run up to the 2012 Olympics.

The fund, which has been established by the London Development Agency and will be delivered in partnership with Arts Council England, is for an initial period of 18 months. Money will be available for applications that offer opportunities for people who have not previously engaged in the arts, particularly those from hard to reach communities.

The cash injection follows the release of research paper London - A Cultural Audit, the first quantitative comparison of the capital’s cultural environment with four other major world cities - New York, Paris, Tokyo and Shanghai.

Figures reveal that London has 55 major theatres, compared to New York’s 39 and Shangai’s 19, and stages 17,285 theatrical performances annually - nearly 5,000 more than New York. The capital also presents 10,000 more music performances each year than the American city, with a total of 32,292, and hosts 200 annual festivals.

Livingstone said: “In the four years between now and London 2012 the eyes of the world will be on the capital city, providing a unique opportunity to show off the rich creative and cultural talents that flourish in London.

“We are working to ensure that those organisations in the creative sector are given all the help they can to achieve this. At a time when funding in the cultural sector is increasingly competitive, support is needed for smaller artistic organisations that need help to bring their work to life and reach out to different communities across the capital.”

Last year, the arts lost £137 million of Lottery money to the Olympic Games. Livingstone was unable to confirm further details of how and if the Cultural Olympiad programme planned to run alongside the 2012 event will be funded.

Old Vic artistic director Kevin Spacey welcomed the proposals. He said: “It is great to see that London is not going to make a decision to leave culture behind. I know from the work that we are doing at the Old Vic and the audiences that we have and are seeing on the South Bank, people come from all over the world to enjoy theatres and galleries and museums.”

Meanwhile, Livingstone has vowed to set up a protection plan for live music venues following the closure of the Hammersmith Palais, develop a live music strategy for London and establish an advisory committee to communicate between the music industry and policy makers.