Online petitions to save arts – is this a trend?

A number of councils, and the National Assembly of Wales, are hosting e-petitions or creating online surveys to find out what local people think about proposals to cut arts budgets or grants to individual organisations.

An e-petition on Croydon Borough Council’s website to save the Clocktower arts centre and the Croydon Summer Festival has collected more than 400 signatories, including two of its own councillors. Southwark Council has issued an online survey asking for feedback from arts organisations on the affect the draft budget. In Wales, a campaign is ongoing to save Theatr Powys and Mid Powys Youth Theatr from reductions in grant or total removal of funding from the Arts Council of Wales. Campaign4creativity has 700 supporters, and is calling on the Assembly to ensure that funding from Powys County Council continues. The impact of petitions and surveys should not be under-estimated. In Cambridge, the Council has justified a £350,000 cut to the budget for the Corn Exchange on the grounds that it had not ranked well in a residents’ survey about spending priorities.

The campaign against library cuts, which has attracted endorsement from high-profile campaigners including author Phillip Pullman, has a high profile in the press, and in some cases appears to overshadow the campaign against arts cuts. However in Birmingham, the council’s original decision to cut all its funding from next financial year to the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG), and Birmingham Jazz has been softened after many letters of support. The two organisations will receive an extra six months funding to cover them up to April 2012 if they join a music hub with the likes of Symphony Hall and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which aims to save money by sharing back office functions.