Cultured communities: The crisis in local funding for arts and culture

Our new report highlights the long-standing crisis in arts and culture funding, fuelled by a decade of government cuts, that has left community arts and culture extremely vulnerable to lockdown, especially outside London.

Cultured Communities argues that the centralised public funding of arts and culture is not working, and calls for devolution of power and funding over the arts so that councils and mayors can repair the damage caused by years of cuts and the pandemic.

The report makes a series of recommendations including:

• Central government should provide a five-year funding settlement for local government, plus an additional £500m arts future resilience fund
• Councils should purchase empty high street premises to place culture at their heart
• Central government should require Arts Council England to distribute National Lottery funding on an equal basis across the country