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Small Grants - Big ImpactDateline: 6th April, 2003We make no apology for publishing this week what many would feel to be out of place on a national theatre website - two longish pages of small grants made by the Arts Council of Wales to community groups and others. The vast majority are well under £10,000, most under £5,000 and some under £1,000. They are not grant-in-aid, the sort of thing which we published last week, but grants for specific projects which will benefit local communities. And that, of course, is what is so important about them: they are for communities to benefit from the arts through participation or through bringing the arts (especially, as far as we are concerned, theatre) right onto their doorsteps. The money all comes from the National Lottery and ACW is one of the distributors of Lottery money. When the Lottery began, vast sums were invested in major arts organisations, theatres, companies, orchestras and so on. Large sums were spent (funded by the Lottery) on feasibility studies and huge projects were undertaken, including, in some cases, major building work. It was, perhaps, inevitable that there should be this explosion of spending, but it wasn't properly thought out and big problems occurred. Organisations tied up a considerable amount of money and a lot of time in preparing bids, and, when they were rejected, as many were, they found themselves in financial trouble. Thus great strain was put on recovery and stabilisation funding. What was worse, successful bids caused big problems, for rebuilt theatres needed larger staffs to run them, but there was no additional money available and, in many cases, resources had been depleted by the very process of making the bid. In addition, staff at, for example, ACE had to be greatly increased to keep pace with the demand and, at one stage, the Lottery department had to be moved out of Great Peter Street because there was not enough space to hold them all. And, of course, in spite of government's avowed embracing of the principle of additionality (that Lottery funding would be in addition to the normal grant paid to the arts, slowly the grant began to decrease and additionality began to be quietly forgotten. That's why I welcome the approach being taken by ACW with its devotion of a considerable sum to fund small grants to community organisations - something which all distributing organisations are now doing. It is absolutely right that Lottery funding should be used for a writer to work with kids in a school, for a village hall to have its performance facilities (lighting, sound or staging) improved, for arts workshops to be held for people with special needs. Articles Indices:
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