A rally by members of performing arts and entertainment trade union Equity has called on Northern Ireland’s Assembly to commit to increased funding for the region’s arts sector.
The call comes as Equity concludes its first annual conference to be held in Northern Ireland. In a significant move, the three-day event was held in Derry rather than Belfast.
It follows news that Echo Echo Dance Theatre, based in the city, is facing closure after the withdrawal of Arts Council funding, although details of other allocations for 2025–26 have yet to be revealed.
Derry’s Waterside Theatre was forced to close in 2024 following a similar decision by the Arts Council. Also in the region’s north-west, Coleraine’s Riverside Theatre is currently threatened after owners Ulster University said its future was “under review”.
More than 100 Equity members assembled outside the offices of the Department for Communities—purse holders of the Arts Council’s budget—in Derry on Monday this week to demand that decades-long underinvestment in Northern Ireland’s arts sector be rectified.
The action, as much as its choice of conference location, is the latest demonstration of Equity’s national body’s growing involvement in Northern Ireland.
In 2023, it launched the "Save the arts, resist the cuts" campaign in response to a 5% cut in arts funding that year which reduced the region’s per capita spend of £5.07 (compared to £10.51 for Wales, its nearest comparator) to the lowest in the UK and Ireland.
That reduction came on the back of a halving of financial support, when adjusted for inflation, over the previous decade.
Concerns have been growing since DUP Arts Minister Gordon Lyon’s ‘Letter of Expectations’ to the the Arts Council in February.
Responding to it, Equity’s Northern Ireland Official, Alice Adams Lemon, said it “highlighted, amongst other things, the areas in which the Minister felt funding ought to be distributed. With no extra funding announced, what can the Minister expect ACNI to achieve? What’s more, his stipulation that ‘any activity disrespectful of any tradition, in locations or by groups receiving Council funding, results in specific and substantive action as regards funding’ is concerning and raises questions around the right to freedom of expression for artists in Northern Ireland”.