|
Arts Council of Wales announces new funding for venues in Wales |
|
The Arts Council of Wales announced yesterday (23/2/99) which organisations will benefit from the three percent increase in it's budget for 1999/2000 The body has decided to to use the Welsh Office's increased allocation of £14.45 million announced in September 1998 to: improve the strength of links between producers and venues increase support for the craft industry in Wales provide greater support for dance organisations This means that more arts bodies will receive annual revenue grants this year than before [but see the Arts Council's new proposed Strategy for funding theatre in Wales, which envisages cutting the revenue funding to over half the existing theatre companies!], including Beaufort Theatre, Blackwood Miners Institute, Pontardwe Arts Centre and Theatr Mwldan in Cardigan Sybil Crouch is the Director of the Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea, which is also receiving for the first time a WAC revenue grant this year of £50,000; previously the centre had relied on project funding. She said,"We welcome it as it is a major step in the right direction" The Arts Council hopes this change in funding will give a financial boost to a new circuit of arts venues in Wales. Chief Executive of ACW, Joanna Weston, said "this is the first opportunity we have had to do anything other than a standstill on funding. This move is a vote of confidence in imaginative programming" Diversions Dance Company has been given a 26% funding increase. Director, Roy Campbell-Moore said ' "It is a modest [!], but welcome first step which has saved us from complete catastrophe, as we were about to lay off all the dance team for up to five months this year" Last year the Arts Council was unable to increase grants because the Welsh Office subjected it to a cash standstill Note from Janek Alexander on this news item: ACW's press release doesn't make clear that these "new grants" to venues are the old year-in, year-out project grants for programming "converted" into annual revenue committments. Some of the venues are financially better off than before, but it is not the jump apparently from zero to 50,000 that it appears to be. A number of theatre companies understandably drawn the wrong conclusion that ACW has transferred money from Drama to Venues. |
| Arts Council of Wales web site: www.ccc-acw.org.uk |
| e-mail: |
Wednesday, February 24, 1999 |
Older news
stories have been carefully archived.
2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999