Arts & Culture Co Delivery Group 2023

Arts &
Culture
Sector
Engagement
Report on critical
actions 2021-23
Steve Batts
Co-Delivery Group Member & Lead on the Arts &
Culture Lobbying Subgroup
The process of developing a lobbying process to
represent the concerns and interests of the arts and
culture sector in DCSDC area has taken place over the
period of the previous co-delivery group. It has been
in close collaboration with DCSDC officers and council
members. The process has been, at least to some degree
effective. Concerns about the disparity in resources tend
no longer to be dismissed as illegitimate and whingeing.
They are explicitly acknowledged as legitimate.
21-23 saw the co delivery group taking a lead in
delivering ongoing sectoral engagement initiatives aimed
at taking the pulse of our sector, our issues, concerns
and achievements towards representing the needs and
aspirations of our sector, fostering a unified approach to
positive change and growth.
Examples of Co Delivery led sectoral engagement
initiatives in the period include the NW Culture Exchange
Symposium 2022, City Conversation: A City of Culture
10 Years On 2023, Creative Arts Network, 2023, DFC
Cultural Strategy Engagement Sessions, 2023, Arts &
Culture Hustings 2023.
Significant developments have been made by the A &
C Co Delivery Group in respect of the development of
an ongoing lobbying process to represent the concerns
and interests of the arts and culture sector in the DCSDC
area.
This has seen extensive engagement with Department
for Communities (DFC), Arts Council Northern Ireland
(ACNI) and DCSDC on the issue of regional disparity.
This process involved significant consultation with
artists and arts organisations and led to the drafting of a
discussion paper not as a list of demands or policy asks,
rather it was intended to open up discussion around ways
to address deep seated structural issues.
In the paper, there is a comprehensive list of concerns
and issues. Central to many of them is the, well
evidenced, experience of long standing, structural underresourcing
of the arts sector in the DCSDC area.
With the support of local MLAs, the Co Delivery Group
presented the paper in a meeting with Minister Hargey
and her team in the autumn of 2021 and subsequently
met with personnel from DFC. Minister Deirdre Hargey’s
acknowledgment of the issue and her invitation to
engage with the DfC Arts branch civil service personnel
raised hopes that the development of a DfC five-year
strategy would give the opportunity to begin to seriously
address historical disparities. The collapse of the regional
government institutions has diminished the democratic
leverage that we had developed. However, we remain
hopeful that the report of the Arts and Culture Task
Force to DfC and the subsequent full strategy to be
developed in early 2024 will still reflect our concerns and
commit to addressing them. Should this not prove to be
the case we should be prepared to continue to lobby
through the democratic channels.
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