Rethink the council cut to Eden Arts

The cut of 70% to Eden Arts funding by Eden District Council – from £49k in April 2010 to £13.5k in 2014 will all but cease the local authority’s support for arts and culture in England’s biggest and most rural district – Eden in Cumbria - rural people love culture too!

Eden Arts turns the core funding funding it receives from EDC into a five fold (+) benefit . EA’s budget forecast for 2012-13 is that against the originally intended £43k from EDC Eden Arts will undertake £220k of spending on projects. We are only able to do this because we receive core funding paying for a small staff who fund-raise and create projects and promotions for the benefit of local residents and tourists alike.

We bring big stars like Bill Bailey, Billy Bragg, Globe Theatre, Northern Sinfonia to Eden on a regular basis. We create community projects like a new rural touring cinema for villages. We create locally embedded projects like FLOCK (www.jointheflock.co.uk) that allow people to participate in a fun and creative scheme that celebrates our local sheep farming. We support writers through creating www.newwritingcumbria.org.uk.

We support Cumbrian artists through our www.c-art.org.uk. We contribute to the vibrancy of the local area and its economy by running installation projects and a pop-up cinema in empty shops.

There is no publicly funded theatre, arts centre or gallery in Eden and no local authority arts officer. Eden Arts is all that the district has by way of arts development organisations– a cross arts organisation with a 20 year history of work for and in Eden. We work with other organisations such as Highlights Rural Touring to ensure that the arts are promoted and enjoyed in Eden. Eden Arts does way more than can be listed here, it punches way above its weight in order to give to the people of Eden.

The arts are a major employer, and they generate far more revenue than they cost to fund. In addition they are a major attraction for tourism in the UK. While cutting arts funding may save money in the short term, in the long run it risks undermining what has been one of the country’s most vibrant areas of growth over the past fifteen years, and destroying one of the national achievements that we should be most proud of.