Response to DCMS consultation
The Crafts Council responded to the DCMS consultation – “Proposal to change shares of National Lottery money allocated to good causes”
July 2010
1. Background
1.1 The Crafts Council is the national development agency for contemporary craft. It aims to build a strong economy and infrastructure for contemporary craft, to increase and diversify the audience for contemporary craft and to champion high quality contemporary craft practice nationally and internationally.
1.2 Nearly 35,000 people work as makers in the contemporary craft sector in the UK, and the sector produces a turnover in excess of £1bn each year.
1.3 The craft sector is a complex mixed economy, with many makers combining income-generating work in their own businesses with projects funded by the public and voluntary sector. The contemporary craft sector has been able to use National Lottery funding to increase the audience for craft, through capital projects at galleries such as the Bilston Craft Gallery in the West Midlands and the National Glass Centre in Sunderland. Equally importantly, Lottery funding has also enabled the contemporary craft sector to engage many children, young people and people with special needs in making, through many smaller projects including work in schools and with community groups. Lottery funding is an important part of the support structure for the craft sector, and is likely to become more important as many public funding for the arts becomes more constrained.
2. Comments on the proposals
2.1 The Crafts Council welcomes the proposal to restore 20% shares to the good causes of arts, sports and heritage. The proposed increase in funding to the arts distributors will enable the contemporary craft sector to reach wider audiences through events, exhibitions and learning programmes. As outlined above, these projects are part of a mixed economy that enables the sector to create jobs and make an important contribution to the vitality of the broader creative industries.
2.3 The proposed phasing of the increase (and the decrease in allocations to the Big Lottery Fund) appears to be a sound way of limiting the impact on voluntary and community sector organisations, taking account of the end of the diversion of Lottery funds to the Olympics. The Crafts Council recognises the concerns of colleagues in the voluntary and community sectors that the proposed reallocation of funding will temporarily reduce the amount of funding available to these sectors, even assuming that the Big Lottery Fund begins to allocate 100% of its funding to voluntary and community sector organisations straight away.
2.4 However, it should be borne in mind that many of the organisations funded by the arts Lottery distributors are voluntary and community sector organisations, which exist to benefit disadvantaged groups and to improve local facilities and environments to the benefit of all residents. The voluntary and community sectors overlap with all the other good causes.
2.5 An important feature of the National Lottery has been the fact that the good causes have been seen as equal, with no particular good cause being more deserving of funding than the others. The Crafts Council suggests these reflections from John Major, the Prime Minister who established the National Lottery, offer a helpful reminder that all the good causes exist to enhance the lives of those they work with:
The genesis of the Lottery lay in my belief that sport, the arts, our heritage and charities enhance the quality of life for millions of people – and I noted at the Treasury that, in the scramble for taxpayer funding, they always lose out to health, education, social services and defence.
As prime minister, my solution was the Lottery: additional funding, free of government interference, to provide resources to replace dilapidated facilities, repair decaying buildings, and boost the arts and charities.
Source: John Major, Daily Telegraph, Labour’s raid on Lotto money must stop, 24 August 2008 , quoted in House of Commons Library Research paper 09/93: The National Lottery – the first 15 years.
2.6 The Crafts Council recognises that the public funding climate is exceptionally difficult and that all arts organisations are facing cuts. Additional lottery funding will be especially welcome in this difficult economic climate. However, the government should not lose sight of the fact that a key principle of Lottery funding has always been its additionality. Lottery funding was always intended to supplement, not replace, core public funding for the good causes and the current financial crisis should not be an occasion to undermine this principle.
