Source · Select Committees · Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Recommendation 3
3
Acknowledged
Paragraph: 38
Despite the potential for the creative industries to help drive the Government’s Levelling Up agenda,...
Conclusion
Despite the potential for the creative industries to help drive the Government’s Levelling Up agenda, funding and support for arts and culture emulates the broader geographic disparities that affect the UK economy and society as a whole. The Government and its arm’s-length bodies have taken some welcome steps to redress this imbalance. However, we are concerned that outside London and the South East, there are areas still not receiving the necessary investment to support their own local and world-class institutions, while in London and the South East, grassroots organisations in deprived areas are experiencing serious financial risk due to a handful of organisations receiving significant proportions of public funding.
Government response summary AI-generated
The government acknowledges concerns regarding sustainability and accessibility of funding for the arts and culture sector over the long term, and welcomes the government listening to recommendations regarding guaranteed funding and the broadened scope for bidding areas.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
38
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government · verbatim extract
Acknowledged
The Government, and Arts Council England, have taken major steps to rebalance funding across regions. This has primarily been achieved through targeting additional investment, along with a redistribution of funding from London to places elsewhere in England. A commitment to rebalance Arts Council England funding was among the most significant policies in the Levelling Up White Paper. The White Paper, published in February 2022, committed all additional Arts Council England funding allocated at the Spending Review 2021 to be distributed to benefit culture and creativity outside London. The White Paper also committed to identifying over 100 places outside London that will be the focus for additional Arts Council England engagement and investment. As a result, DCMS and Arts Council England jointly identified 109 Levelling Up for Culture Places (LUCPs) through a data-driven methodology highlighting the areas with the greatest need and lowest rates of historical cultural investment and engagement.14 The 2023–26 Arts Council England Investment Programme, announced in November 2022, will increase the number of funded organisations in these LUCPs by 79% (from 107 to 192 organisations) and will increase the level of investment in LUCPs by 95%, or £21.2m per annum. Over the life of the next Spending Review period this will mean more funding for more arts organisations, museums, libraries, and heritage sites and visitor attractions in more places across England–and will ensure a more equitable spread of cultural opportunity. Current Arts Council England funding policy does not impose a distinction between ‘world class, national cultural institutions’ and ‘local and regional cultural organisations’. Of course, cultural sector organisations vary in scale and international significance, but they are part of a genuinely national cultural sector, which is itself made up of hyper-local, local and regional clusters–each with a degree of interdependence. While it is true that larger cultural organisations are located disproportionately in London (and indeed other major cities), this is not exclusively so, and even given the scale of these organisations they are also part of local cultural ecosystems–and this needs to be taken into account. Larger organisations both support and also depend on a range of other organisations at different scales. Likewise, these organisations are part of broader creative industr
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