Applications are now open for creative businesses focusing on digital content to apply for funding from ACNI. The Department for Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) have announced £4m, to be administered over four years, to encourage growth, creativity and innovation.

‘Art Take Part!’ is a new initiative launched by Voluntary Arts Ireland and Culture Northern Ireland.

In Wales, Labour’s Huw Lewis AM takes up the post as Minister for Housing, Regeneration and Heritage.

From Monday 23rd May, craft professionals are invited to take part in a telephone survey, aimed at mapping the size and impact of the craft sector.

A good news story about the power of the arts lobby has emerged from Northern Ireland this week. The Arts were facing a proposed £4.2 million budget cut, representing a real terms reduction of 23% with inflation. This budget cut was disproportionately high compared with other sectors.

The Minister for Finance and Personnel, Sammy Wilson, has visited a number of successful businesses that have received money from the Creative Industries Innovation Fund administered by Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

The draft budget for Northern Ireland was announced on Wednesday 15 December and includes a 9.3 per cent cut to the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) over four years.

The Northern Ireland Executive is in the process of drafting a new Programme for Government for 2011-2015.  As part of this initiative, a new set of Public Service Agreements (PSAs) will be outlined, including spending priorities, objectives and targets for the arts.

To allow for the summer holidays, Northern Ireland’s Culture Minister Nelson McCausland has extended the draft Museums Policy consultation deadline for a further five weeks to 30 September 2010.

Last month, the NCA informed members of Northern Ireland’s Culture Minister, Nelson McCausland’s, plans to hold a consultation on a museums policy for Northern Ireland. 

In the light of impending cuts to public spending across the UK, it is essential that artists and organisations maximise their fundraising potential by knowing what funding is available, from where and, crucially, when the delaines for applications are.

Culture Minister Nelson McCausland MLA (DUP) launched a consultation on a museums policy for Northern Ireland this week. The consultation meets a commitment made by the Minister to the Culture, Arts and Leisure Committee’s Inquiry into the need to have a museums policy for Northern Ireland. The policy document sets the framework for the development of Northern Ireland’s national and local museums over the next ten years

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) held a seminar for arts groups on lobbying in the wonderful surroundings of the newly refurbished Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast on 21 April. 

Following the proposed budget announcement made on Monday 11th January by the Finance Minister of Northern Ireland of a £367 million budget cut across government departments in April 2010, the Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure, Nelson McCausland, has indicated that the Arts Council for Northern Ireland (ACNI) should plan for a budget cut of approximately £1.1 million in 2010/11. The Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL), which is the Arts Council’s parent department, is itself set to lose £25.9 million, making it in proportional terms the second hardest hit of Northern Ireland’s government departments.

The Northern Ireland Assembly’s Culture, Arts and Leisure (CAL) Committee launched its report on the state of funding for the arts in Northern Ireland this week. The report has been produced after a lengthy inquiry, during which the Committee received 71 submissions, considered oral evidence from 20 key stakeholders, and commissioned 9 research papers on funding of the arts.

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.