Arts Council England Let’s Create Delivery Plan
I’ve just read through what Arts Council England have released so far of its Let’s Create Delivery Plan.
It’s mostly the vision, so far, more than how it will be realised, but everyone should be really pleased that of the “Five Themes” number two is “supporting individuals”.
Through the rest of the plan, it looks like the aim is to do this by keeping up the 20/21 level of DYCP and the other usual funding schemes, but the emphasis is really important.
It also certainly offers us an open door to try and make a significant input into the rest of the plan, to be released in the summer.
Here is theme two:
2. SUPPORTING INDIVIDUALS
Our funding models have traditionally relied on an assumption that our grants will flow readily from the organisations we support to the individuals with whom they work. The pandemic has, however, highlighted that this ‘trickle down’ model is not working effectively, and that the Arts Council will need to provide more direct support to individual creative practitioners.
In addition, the Arts Council will work with others, including established and emerging networks of freelancers, to identify what further steps we can jointly take to build a more equitable ecology, and to help individual practitioners establish and sustain independent creative careers. This will include a combination of improved financial support alongside improved access to training and development opportunities to help individuals adjust to the post- pandemic landscape. We recognise that the freelance workforce in the cultural sector is large and varied, with a range of different needs.
As we will not have the resources to support all freelancers working – or hoping to work – in the cultural sector, we will therefore prioritise supporting those parts of the freelance community where our intervention is most needed, and can have the greatest impact.
In particular, we will focus on those creative practitioners who are at the earliest stages of their careers, and
who come from backgrounds that are currently under- represented in the publicly funded cultural sector.
Given the very visible impact of the pandemic on the creative industries, there is a real danger that many young people will abandon their aspirations for a career in our sector. We will work with others to rebuild confidence, especially among children and young people, in the viability of a career in the creative industries. We will work with partners to ensure that new pathways into the creative industries are opened up for young people everywhere, but especially Black, Asian, ethnically diverse and disabled creative practitioners, as well as those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
1 In its 2017 Creative Freelancers report, Creative Industries Federation reported that 47 per cent of the creative industries workforce was freelance, compared with just 15 per cent of the general UK workforce.’
Although ‘England’ centric, I would encourage you to read the whole thingt. It’s quite insipiring in many ways, though it REALLY needs the release of the rest of the plan to set out how they will actually achieve all theses awesome ambitions.
