Written evidence submitted by the Foundation
for Community Dance (arts 08)
The Foundation for Community Dance is the professional
organisation for anyone involved in creating opportunities for
people to experience and participate in dance. We have over 2,000
members—dance artists, organisations and companies, colleges,
universities and local authorities—who represent some 5,000
professionals working in community and participatory dance across
the UK and reach almost five million participants and an estimated
audience of 10 million annually.
1. The impact that recent, and future, spending
cuts from central and local Government will have on the arts and
heritage at national and local level
1.1 The recent and significant increase
in arts funding over the past 10 years has raised the aspirations
and ambitions of arts organisations, participants and audiences
therefore spending cuts at both central and local level will be
felt more deeply than before. Small community-based dance organisations,
which the Foundation for Community Dance represents, will find
it difficult to sustain year-round activity and will be thrown
back on small and intermittent project grants—a regression
to the funding environment of the 1990's.
1.2 Much is being made of the potential
cuts to national arms-length bodies, yet our concern is that reduction
in funding by local authorities will have a deeper impact on community
and participatory arts activities. Funding for organisations that
offer community dance activities as part of their programme is
very often a partnership between the Arts Council and local authorities,
and we would regret any return to the game of ping-pong between
funders symptomatic of previous decades.
2. What arts organisations can do to work
more closely together in order to reduce duplication of effort
and to make economies of scale
2.1 Collaboration is of great benefit to
the arts. We offer two examples of how the dance sector, through
clear leadership and clarity of purpose, has worked together to
forward national strategic programmes—with each partner
bringing to the table their own expertise and resource:
2.2 Dance Training and Accreditation Partnership
(DTAP): a small group of national dance bodies came together to
address the issue of quality dance provision for young people
in the informal sector. Sharing their knowledge and skills, they
have developed a national qualification for teaching dance with
children and young people in the informal sector; are developing
national occupational standards for community dance; and researching
the potential of establishing a more formalised approach to quality
assurance across dance. The group successfully applied as a consortium
for Arts Council England lottery funding, which no individual
organisation could have achieved on its own.
2.3 Dance Takes the Lead Group: A much broader
coalition of some 20 organisations representing the full spectrum
of dance in the UK came together to develop proposals for dance
to have a role in the Cultural Olympiad. This was a sector-wide
initiative to address the issue of dance not having a specific
strand in the Olympiad programme in the way other artforms have.
We have, together, developed an exciting proposal that is being
taken forward by LOCOG and the Arts Councils of the UK. It would
have been simply impossible for one organisation to achieve this.
3. What level of public subsidy for the arts
and heritage is necessary and sustainable
3.1 We don't know that we can answer this
in any meaningful way, other than to say that after a period of
increases in state subsidy of the arts we were approaching a time
that felt far more sustainable than ever before. Any damage to
this should be minimised, as should the wasteful or irresponsible
use of public funds by funded arts organisations.
4. Whether the current system, and structure,
of funding distribution is the right one
4.1 We support the arms length principle,
and the need for the Arts Councils. However, our sense is that
there is further scope to develop more streamlined and transparent
organisations that have themselves responded and changed in relation
to the external financial and social landscape.
5. Whether the policy guidelines for lottery
funding need to be reviewed
5.1 We welcome the Secretary of State's
consultation about the national lottery shares. We support a widening
of access to arts using lottery funding and a review of policy
to take account of this.
6. Whether businesses and philanthropists
can play a long-term role in funding arts at national and local
level
6.1 Philanthropy clearly has a role to play
in the funding mix for the arts. Indeed many large national and
London-based organisations have very successful track records
in attracting donations. Recent evidence from the USA suggests
that in the current economic climate these kinds of donations
are beginning to slow down.
6.2 We have serious doubts that individual
and corporate donations will provide any significant or serious
level of sustainable support to community arts activity. We do
not believe that the donor benefits or attractions exist within
small-scale and grass roots arts activities to develop philanthropy,
as currently envisaged by the Government, as a sustainable part
of the funding mix.
6.3 Some corporations—eg Natwest,
Tesco etc—already run community investment programmes, and
support local charitable activities though on the whole these
are small, one-off amounts and arts organisations are not often
beneficiaries. Where more significant corporate donations exist
these are very often targeted at mainstream arts performance and
providers—opera, ballet, classical music. We should be very
wary of applying models that work for these organisations to ALL
organisations. Where potential to attract donations exists this
should be encouraged, where is does not this should not result
in punishment.
7. Whether there needs to be more government
incentives to encourage private donations
7.1 Yes. However, we might need to consider
an approach about changing hearts and minds—a values based
campaign—and less about individual and corporate tax breaks,
to initiate a step-change particularly to individual giving. Might
the plethora of lobbies and organisations set up to help us "cope
with the cuts" usefully work together on this?
7.2 We also suggest that Brazil developed
an interesting model, where corporations receive tax incentives
for their donations to socially inclusive work rather than the
merit-goods offered by the large-scale national galleries and
companies.
August 2010
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