With the General Election on the horizon – presenting a potential change of Government and with the economic situation posing a very real threat to arts and dance funding – Dance UK has launched DanceVote 2010, the national advocacy campaign to put dance on the agenda of local political candidates.

The NCA has drafted its response to Arts Council England’s (ACE) Achieving great art for everyone consultation, for which we are seeking members’ comments.

The results of the consultation will inform a ten-year strategic framework and ACE’s future investment decisions. The consultation represents the first time the Arts Council has brought together all art forms and development areas into one set of long-term priorities.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) have published an initial review of the Find Your Talent (FYT) programme, launched in 2008.

Unusually so close after Christmas, Parliament is focussed on no fewer than four pieces of legislation which are of interest to the arts sector.

The Migration Advisory Committee has published its report on further changes to the criteria for Tier 1, in the face of the changing economic climate. The report can be read here.

Taking Part has published its latest data relating to children’s engagement and non-engagement in culture, leisure and sport. The data is based on interviews conducted between July 2008 and July 2009, in which 1,476 five to ten year olds and 1,146 11 to 15 year olds were asked to quantify their involvement in the sports and cultural sectors. Figures show that 99.2 per cent of five to ten year olds had engaged in cultural activity out of school time in the past 12 months, whereas 99.4 per cent of 11 to 15 year olds had participated in and out of school in the past year.

The Executive Summary of the Arts Index is available to everyone. The full copy of the Arts Index report is only available to members of the NCA. Click here for details on how to join.

The production of the Arts Index would not have been possible without the help and support of the following organisations, to whom we are enormously grateful:

Audiences UK, Audiences London, Americans for the Arts, Arts and Business, Arts Council England, Arts Council of Wales, Arts Council Northern Ireland and The Department for Culture, Media & Sport.

Thanks too to Don Foster MP for sponsoring the launch at the House of Commons, and to Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, Shadow Culture Minister Dan Jarvis, John Nickson and Ivan Cutting for speaking. 

General Election 2010 candidates replies to email requesting support for the arts. Table of responses by constituency, candidate and party.