Extra £75million for arts and culture outside London, Ministers announce

An additional £75m will be put towards creative arts outside of the capital between now and 2025, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has announced today, with a number of areas of Yorkshire earmarked for additional spending.

An extra £43m allocated to the Arts Council England last year will all be spent outside of London, DCMS said, while a rearranging of other budgets will see an additional £32m also spent this way.

Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley are among the places set to benefit as money is redistributed.

In total, 109 places across England have been identified as deserving of extra arts funding, “places that perhaps haven’t been well served in the past, and who haven’t had the same advantages and the same funding as other parts of the country,” according to Arts Minister Lord Parkinson.

Across Yorkshire and the Humber, East Riding, Kirklees, North East Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire, and Selby have also been teed up for more cash.

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post yesterday, Lord Parkinson, who was born in North Shields, said: “Those are places which will, in particular, get the Arts Council’s attention.

“They will have a look and say, ‘what is there’, because there is culture everywhere, and there’s creativity in all of us.

“There are brilliant organisations already doing work, but who haven’t had the same opportunities as in other parts of the countries before. But everywhere will be able to benefit as well.

“So right across Yorkshire organisations will be able to bid for the extra money that’s up for grabs.”

Individual projects that benefit will be decided by the Arts Council which will allocate money through their National Portfolio.

But Lord Parkinson wants “to see groups of organisations of all shapes and sizes” benefitting as well as “some new ones coming into the portfolio”.

“The idea of a national portfolio is it should be should be as broad as possible,” Lord Parkinson added:

“We want to have, big and small, old and new, but the main thing is to make sure that everybody has access to brilliant culture on their doorstep.”

Writing in The Yorkshire Post today, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said that Arts Council spending currently equates to around £21 per head in London, while it sits at £9.20 in Yorkshire and the Humber.

In terms of the Arts Council’s National Portfolio Organisations, “London has more such organisations than Yorkshire and the Humber, the North East and the North West combined”, Ms Dorries said.

One of the main reasons Whitehall figures say want to see the cash spent in areas outside of London is to ensure that people who do not live in the capital to not have to expend the time and money travelling to get access to world class arts and culture.

Lord Parkinson said: “Nobody should have to travel to access these opportunities.

“One of the reasons why we want to make sure that the funding is going to every part of the country is so that you don’t have to get on the train and go to London to see a brilliant new musical or to go and see a fantastic exhibition at an art gallery.

“We want to bring all those opportunities closer to home to people so that they’re more accessible level and it’s easier for people to do.”

“There’s brilliance everywhere we and people should be able to see nationally and internationally renowned art and culture wherever they live in the country,” he added.