During the summer of 2019, Community Leisure UK welcomed the opportunity by Arts Council of Wales to give a final response on how they implemented earlier received feedback on the future arrangement for National Lottery funding for the arts in Wales. Arts Council of Wales shared 12 topics that underline their intentions for the future arrangement for National Lottery Funding. Community Leisure UK felt best placed to comment on eight of them.
As part of the consultation, we responded to the following topics:
Community Leisure UK strongly supports the focus on inclusion of diverse communities and making arts and culture accessible to all. This is a value that underpins the work of our member trusts, who are true community anchors and adapt their services based on the needs of their communities. We find it important that organisations understand their communities, and the groups they want to reach, and believe the unique artistic and cultural differences of each community should be recognised.
We welcomed Arts Council of Wales focus on building resilience and long-term support for artists and arts/cultural organisations. We advocate ethical employment and support fair remuneration of artists or any employee, but we cautioned against setting artist fee guidelines as funding conditions it may inadvertently increase the existing financial pressures on arts and cultural organisations – a situation already caused by, among others, increased utility costs and significant reductions in core funding.
Community Leisure UK further offered Arts Council of Wales support in providing networking, peer support, and best practice sharing to support the development of the arts ecology. This is an important part of our work and we are happy to bring this to a more national level in Wales, if appropriate.
Further, we highlighted the changes in the cultural delivery landscape where trusts are important partners in delivering public cultural services. These organisations will need funding and development support just as much as local authorities, a newly established organisation or artists do, as they may want to try new, innovative programmes, scale or adapt existing ones, research and trial technological developments and usage, or scope organisational efficiencies.
Finally, we recognise Arts Council of Wales call for support in advocating for the important arts work in Wales – we can, will and are already supporting this.
Please find our full response in the document below.
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