The Arts Council announced today that it has fulfilled its pledge to plough the hard-won uplift of £1.7m it secured through the NI Budget 2008-11 straight back into the arts in Northern Ireland.
Overall, 96 organisations will receive funding to support their year-round running costs. The announcement will come as welcome news to the arts sector, which had been bracing itself for another year of standstill funding aggravated by declining Lottery funds.
Making the funding announcement, Arts Council Chief Executive, Roisín McDonough, said, “We’ve managed to lift levels of funding for most of our core arts organisations, building stability where it’s needed most. These organisations will now be able to begin important and long-awaited development work, instead of just surviving.
“The Council continues to have to make difficult strategic decisions, but we have been able to offer support to many organisations we feared might become casualties of funding shortages.
“We were forced to close one of our major funding programmes at the end of last year due to the raid on Lottery funding for the arts to fund the London 2012 Olympic Games, leaving 56 of our arts organisations clearly at risk. Thanks to the additional monies made available to us in January through the NI Budget 2008-2011, I’m delighted that we’ve now been able to bring most of these organisations back in from the cold”, Ms McDonough concluded.
32 at risk organisations will now benefit from the added security of annual funding.