Editorial:

When the Treasury announced that £5 billion savings needed to be found in 2010/11, it was natural for a ripple of fear to run through the cultural sector. Concerned about the implications of such cuts, the National Campaign for the Arts (NCA) led a delegation to meet the Secretary of State for Culture, Andy Burnham, on 9 February. Crucially, the delegation sought not only to clarify the pressures on the minister’s departmental budgets, but also to identify where and how they might help to make the case for the arts.

For his part, Andy Burnham stressed that he would be making a powerful argument for sustained investment in the sector. 
 
Those of us who are responsible for trying to keep art and intercultural dialogue alive must all learn to present our case more rationally and cogently than ever before. We will need more than ever to persuade those with money to distribute that it will be spent well and unwastefully. And that’s not going to be easy in a new landscape in which even those who have been predisposed to support the arts most generously in the past will be hard-pressed to help.

Part of our challenge will be to remind everyone in a society that likes to call itself civilised and caring, that artists – and the cultural connections they make – are every bit as integral to the future well-being of the nation as car workers, civil servants, farmers, bus drivers or, dare we say it, bankers.  

In hard times it is more important than ever that intercultural dialogue continues; indeed, that it is strengthened. With this in mind, those organisations and individuals who seek to provide artists with new opportunities, experiences and skills must work together, create new and dynamic partnerships and not allow themselves to become fragmented in a scrap for limited resources.

http://newsweaver.co.uk/visitingarts/e_article001351969.cfm?x=bf9JS10,b6RSjcRc