Research by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland reveals that 79 per cent of its funding since 2010 has been awarded to the most deprived areas of Northern Ireland.
The figure published in the Arts Council's Annual Review for 2012/13 highlights the fact that public funding for the arts benefits all areas of society, The Annual Review goes on to feature some of the notable successes in a remarkable year for the arts. Never have the arts had such a high profile in Northern Ireland, with the culmination of the Legacy Trust and Cultural Olympiad programmes, the London 2012 festival, the opening of the The MAC in Belfast, the 50th anniversary of the Belfast Festival at Queen's at the start of the year-long celebration of Derry-Londonderry as the UK City of Culture for 2013
Throughout the year the Arts Council continued to develop initiatives to ensure that great art is available to all. It introduced Northern Ireland’s first Intercultural Arts Strategy to encourage greater engagement with minority ethnic communities and promote the rich diversity of cultural and artistic traditions that now exist in Northern Ireland. The Celebration of Age Week in March 2013 welcomed over 16,000 participants to a showcase of the multiple successes of the Arts Council’s Arts & Older People Programme. The Arts Council also organised Belfast’s first One City One Book initiative, featuring Glenn Patterson’s novel, The Mill for Grinding Old People Young, to raise the profile of local writers.
Bob Collins, Chair of the Arts Council, commented, “The commitment of public money to the arts is a profound statement of their central significance in the life of the community. That such commitment endures in times of economic difficulty is a clear recognition that the arts are an intrinsic and essential part of our lives as individuals. All who contribute to the public funding of the arts – and everybody in Northern Ireland does – should be able to have access to the arts.”
To see a list of standout successes in 2012-2013, see the complete media release at the external link below.