CWL NEWS ARCHVE

This is the CWL News and Funded Project News Archive. It draws an informative picture on which stories relevant to the creative industries were happening during the AHRC-funded period of Creativeworks London between 2012 and 2016.

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Arts Council England: New Report published on Diversity in arts and culture as new investment announced

Arts Council England (ACE) have published a new report on diversity in the arts and culture sector and are also launching four new strategic funds for diversity totalling £8.6million.

On Monday (7 December) ACE Chair Sir Peter Bazalgette, delivered a speech on Diversity and the Creative Case as the new report Equality, Diversity and the Creative Case – A data report 2012-2015 was published. In his speech, he explored the key findings from the report, noting that while some progress has been made in embedding diversity across the arts and culture sector, there is more to do.

Key findings from the report:

– Across National Portfolio Organisations there is a slow increase in numbers of Black and minority ethnic staff emerging with 2014/15 figures now standing at 13.7 per cent of the total workforce. The number of disabled people working in National Portfolio Organisations has also increased slightly to 1.9 per cent.

– The Black and minority ethnic workforce across Major Partner Museums has remained static at 3 per cent, but there has been an increase in disabled people working in MPMs to 3.8 per cent.

– There has been a significant increase in the success rate of Black and minority ethnic applicants to our Grants for the Arts programme (up 13.1 per cent to 52.3 per cent across 2012-15); with a smaller increase for disabled applicants for the same period, now at 50.6 per cent.

The report also provides workforce data on the Arts Council itself. Click here to download and read the full report.

New funding programmes for diversity in the arts and culture. These funds are:

Elevate (£2.1 million) – created to develop the strength, management and governance of diverse-led organisations outside the Arts Council’s National Portfolio. The intention is to increase the diversity of applications in future investment rounds.

Unlimited (£1.8 million) – will support the development of a range of new work by Deaf and disabled artists – a single grant of £1.8 million will be made to an organisation or consortia to run this already successful programme until 2020.

The Sustained Theatre fund (£2 million) – will offer support to the development of black and minority ethnic (BME) theatre makers across the wider theatre sector in England.

Change Makers (£2.6 million) – will address the lack of diversity in arts leadership. It will fund long-term relationships between National Portfolio Organisations and aspiring arts leaders from the BME and D/deaf and disabled communities. These mutually beneficial relationships will provide valuable experience to individuals while allowing them to shape the development of the creative case from within the sector.

Find out more about the funds including reading application guidance here.

www.artscouncil.org.uk

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Queen Mary - University of London
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Creativeworks London is one of four Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to develop strategic partnerships with creative businesses and cultural organisations, to strengthen and diversify their collaborative research activities and increase the number of arts and humanities researchers actively engaged in research-based knowledge exchange.