The Stage

Northern Ireland’s arts spend is lowest in UK

Published Friday 4 December 2009 at 11:11 by Michael Quinn

The findings of an inquiry into funding for the arts in Northern Ireland have been published by the regional assembly’s Culture, Arts and Leisure Committee.

The arts employ 33,000 (4.6% of Northern Ireland’s population) on the lowest per capita spend in the UK and Ireland, receiving just £7.58 compared to £14.04 in Scotland and £16.31 in the Republic of Ireland.

The report is the product of a lengthy investigation that saw more than 70 submissions from arts organisations, oral evidence from 20 key stakeholders and the commissioning of nine research papers by the committee.

Earlier this year, one of those papers revealed that Northern Ireland’s theatres sold 920,000 tickets for almost 6,500 events in 2008, accounting for more than half of all tickets sold in the region during the year and collectively worth £13.3 million. In submissions to the enquiry, Belfast’s Lyric Theatre and Grand Opera House said that every £1 of public money they received generated £3.50 and £5 respectively for the local economy.

Among the report’s 14 key recommendations were proposals to allocate more funds to community and voluntary arts (including amateur drama) and to community-based arts initiatives. Research into arts-related spending by other government departments and an inter-departmental group on arts funding was also mooted.

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland was also charged with several directives aimed at identifying other sources of funding for client bodies, increased feedback for unsuccessful funding applicants and earlier notification of spending decisions to allow organisations more time to plan for allocated monies.