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Richie Turner explains a new funding approach from the Arts Council of Wales – including big Lottery awards for talented individuals 

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In April the Arts Council of Wales launched a new range of funding schemes, which herald our new thinking about how Lottery funds can be best used to maximise the benefits to the arts and people of Wales.

The first big step was to recognise that the previous separation between Lottery-funded schemes and those funded via taxpayers (ie, from the Welsh Assembly government), was restricting ACW’s ability to spend its finite resources in the most strategic way. As a result, in July ACW will publish a five-year arts development strategy, which outlines for the first time an approach that combines these two funding strands. Our second step was radically to review all existing Lottery and grant-in-aid schemes. Some of these were relatively new, such as the Arts for All Lottery scheme, introduced in January 1997; others had been in existence for more than 20 years. ACW was offering 43 different funding schemes in total, which we realised were unnecessarily complex to operate and excessively complex for applicants to understand. ACW now offers 15 funding schemes which we believe are easier to understand, easier to apply to and more efficient to operate. And significantly, all schemes now have common eligibility criteria, which means they can be funded from either Lottery income or grant-in-aid in any given year. 

Such commonality means we apply the principle of additionality to all schemes and consequently to all awards. It means all schemes need some element of partnership funding, whereas before this was only a requirement for Lottery schemes. And it means common eligibility rules for all applicants.

This leads to the last big step in our new Lottery schemes. Previously, only not-for-profit organisations could receive Lottery awards. Since April individuals working in the arts can receive Lottery grants. You may not think there’s anything startlingly new about that. For some bits of the Lottery, you would be right. The Millennium Commission has given grants to individuals for many years and UK Sport estimate they will have invested £100m by the time of the Athens Olympic Games to ensure that the UK’s best athletes can be competitive at the highest level. ACW’s ‘sister’ Lottery distributor in Wales, the Sport Council for Wales, has funded its Elite Cymru scheme (which supports the most promising Welsh athletes to achieve their potential) from Lottery income for several years. Yet apply the same principle to arts funding and you run into a problem of perception. Would the Lotto ticket-buying public be so happy to hear of an ‘Elite Arts Cymru’ scheme? We hope they will, because that is in reality what ACW has just established. Following the Scottish Arts Council’s lead, ACW has launched its ‘Creative Wales Awards’ for individual artists, with grants of up to £25,000. This is complemented by ‘Professional Development – Training’ grants and ‘Capacity Building and Development Fund’ grants for individuals in all fields of arts.

The central point behind these schemes is that ACW believes artists (actors, dancers, musicians, writers, craftmakers, choreographers, film makers, theatre directors, composers, visual artists and anyone involved in creative disciplines) need investment in their potential as much as sportswomen and men, and as much as community volunteers. They, too, are active citizens; they bring benefit to our communities, our society and our nation. Artistic ambition does not equal elitism any more than competition between our top athletics.

As the Welsh Assembly’s new 10-year strategy for the arts, ‘Creative Future’ says: “We must respect individual artistic endeavour as we would any other valuable professional contribution to our society.”

Yet to agree that our artists need support is one thing, celebrating their successes and recognising their needs is another. If a sportsperson needs to train in Australia to access the best facilities, who would deny them the chance? If an artist needs to train abroad, paid for by Lottery money, would you be so supportive – or would you say to yourself ‘… a nice jolly if you can get it, but why am I paying for that?’ ACW has already agreed to fund (from Lottery income) our leading Indian dance company to train in India, because that is where they will receive the best teaching; from which they will return to Wales and continue to teach our most promising young dancers. Sport already has the capability to define a nation; through increased investment and awareness of Wales’ artists, ACW hopes the same will before long be said of our arts. We want the names of Paul Wearing (Welsh Artist of the Year 2002 – Ceramics) or Grahame Davies and Stevie Davies (Welsh Book of the Year 2002 winners) to be as well known and as celebrated in Wales as the achievements of Tanni Grey-Thompson or Neil Jenkins.

‘We must reject the false choices that so often disfigure debate and discussion – an arts centre or a stadium, a gallery or a hospital, a theatre or a school – as if any rounded society can do without any of these things, as if there was no room for a theatre in a school, no room for children in a theatre, nor room for art in a hospital, nor for the sick or recovering in a gallery. As if those who shout in a crowd have never applauded in an auditorium.’ (Creative Future, Welsh Assembly Government, 2002)

Richie Turner is Senior Strategic Development Officer for the ACW