'Imbalance' in NW arts funding raised as Derry artist speaks of challenges

In a presentation before the Business & Culture Committee at their monthly meeting on Tuesday, Ollie Green from the Arts & Culture Co-Delivery Group, and group member, artist Sorcha Shanahan described the very real challenges facing organisations and independent artists living, working and adding to the cultural life in the north west.

Sorcha Shanahan described how so many artists want to live and work here as there is something special about the city and district, but said that many were facing hardships.

Mr Green, who is the Artistic Director at Studio 2, detailed how the Co-Delivery Group was a coming together of the arts sector from across Derry City & Strabane District Council area, with arts and cultural groups, individuals artists, educational bodies, senior Council officers and elected reps to try and resource, design, organise and deliver an agreed five year cultural strategy to 2024.

The delivery group has worked very well, he said. “It is something that you as Council and councillors should be very proud of that, but the collective ownership of the cultural strategy and the vision behind that strategy has run into a number of major concerns, primarily the lack of resource to deliver, and that is part of a legacy of a lack of resource coming to the North west region.”

Street performer, actor and drama facilitator Sorcha Shanahan joined the co-delivery group because of Halloween 2022. “It gave me the impetus, off my own back, to do a survey of independent artists over the whole district and found that, like me, they love living here. They want to continue to live here. They are good enough to work and live in other places but they choose to live here because there is something special about this place.

"Arts and creativity are key to changing the entire world as we know it. Physical health, mental health, community resilience social deprivation never mind as a destination for business and tourism investment: arts and culture are key. And because most artists and creatives are freelance I want to be clear about what that means: We don’t have a regular pay check, we don’t know how much money we will be bringing in each year, we do not hold office hours, we need to network with people and organisations in order to be in the running for work, we need to be amenable and good to work with, flexible, available, be able to respond to briefs and projects thought up by fundraisers and admins and deliver them to any group.”

"We are either subsidised and on the hunt for more, or we are completely outside any funding streams and selling directly to the market. We need to be physically and mentally healthy and able for work. We are visionary and pragmatic. We do not have sick pay, we do not have holiday pay. We do not have pensions. We do not have security. We need to be able to running our accounts, our schedule, our admin, our PR on top of doing the work we do as artists. We have to find the joy in what we do because we have so little control over what is is we are being paid to do. We all have other jobs to subsidise what it is we do. We make our side hustles profitable, and we get really good at budgeting.”

Artists, Sorcha stressed, were dedicated, flexible and caring people that every place should value.

Mr Green said that a sub-group of the co-design group had looked at the funding situation and at trying to get additional resource into the north west. “Part of that process very clearly identified that there has been an historical imbalance in terms of the level of resource coming into the north west in comparison to the likes of Belfast.”

He said the facts and information backing that up that were presented during conversations in the Assembly when it was up and running, with the last Department for Communities (DfC) Minister and with the head of the Arts Council. Concerns raised, they were told, would be taken on board during the development of new strategies.

A new ‘Investing in Creative Delivery’ report from the taskforce tasked with delivering new NI-wide strategies, he said, has now been forwarded to DfC to inform the future strategy.

"We believe there is more work to be done collectively as a co-design group, yourselves as a committee and the whole Council in trying to achieve fairness and equity when it comes to supporting the arts and culture sector, something we believe that hasn’t been there.”

On behalf of the co-design group, Mr Green urged the committee to ask for copies of the report, and to ask DfC and the Arts Council to present on new draft strategies and how underinvestment in the North West is to be addressed within them. The committee was also asked to secure commitments from the Arts Council and DfC on the localised strategy, while it was mooted Council should review its own current Cultural Grant Aid budgets.

Co-delivery group member, SDLP Colr. Rory Farrell proposed the committee accept the asks from the group.

"These arguments are well rehearsed. In 2021 there was £19m worth of public money invested in arts in Belfast City Council area. In the same year there was £1.9m invested in this city and district. That’s from DfC and the Arts Council combined so for every £1 this city and district got, Belfast got £11. It is clear there is an imbalance.

“We need senior members from DfC and the Arts Council to come here to say how they are going to put this into action. At the minute there are words. There is no strategy here about how they are going to change this.”

Independent Colr. Gary Donnelly agreed they needed to get those senior representatives in and dig down into how this ‘discrimination’ was going to be turned around.

People Before Profit Colr. Shaun Harkin praised the work of the group and said the Council needed to come in in support of the co-delivery group and “interrogate” the new draft NI-wide strategy document.

UUP Alderman Derek Hussey also expressed support, but also spoke of an internal district disparity in terms of festivals and arts distribution.

DUP Alderman Julie Middleton described the presentation as “very, very informative and passionate”, and said it was important to hear from artists about their lives.

Sinn Féin Councillor John McGowan said he couldn’t disagree with anything either Ollie or Sorcha had said. He said he had had issues with the Arts Council and with the figures of £5 per head spend in the six counties compared £25 in the 26 counties.

"Without what you do on the ground we wouldn’t have a Hallowe’en,” he said. “When you look down across the city, at what you are doing in Studio 2, what the community is doing, what Council is doing has put arts on the map.”

He also called for a similar scheme to that introduced by the Irish government to pay artists a salary. “During COVID a lot of artists starved and a lot of them had no income,” he warned.

Sorcha said the rates of pay for artists have not changed in decades.