Dear Friends & Colleagues
Response to Arts Council England National Portfolio Decisions for 2015 to 2018
Big Brum are sad to announce that we have been cut from the Arts Council England’s National Portfolio, as of April 2015. This is very difficult news for the company, as it means the core of our funding has been withdrawn, and as an organisation we will therefore be facing a major challenge to our operations from 2015 onwards.
We are profoundly disappointed with the decision. We are surprised that, whilst the Arts Council have apparently prioritised young people in this funding round, they have decided to remove support from an organisation that delivers high quality theatre to, in their own words, “diverse audiences primarily in Birmingham’s most deprived communities.”
We do think that it is a real shame that the Arts Council England have withdrawn funding from several smaller organisations working with those most excluded from the arts. We believe that the arts sector will be weakened by this round of funding decisions. In our own case, we know thousands of young people each year benefit from our arts activity, a provision which is now under threat.
At this time we are still assessing the full impact of the cut. We will explore all options that remain open to us and will keep everyone informed regarding our response.
Best wishes
Big Brum
What You Can Do To Help
We are receiving many messages of support from our friends and colleagues all over the world, which is much appreciated.
We would like to collate peoples’ views and thoughts on the Arts Council England decision, and what this might mean for young people in Birmingham and beyond, as well as the future of Theatre in Education which should be celebrating 50 years in 2015.
Please send your message of support to our manager Dan at: Dan@bigbrum.plus.com. Many thanks.
Big Brum on Sky News!
Within an hour of our hearing such bad news, we received a call from Sky wanting to send a team over to interview us about the funding cut.
It was featured in their report on Arts Council funding yesterday and there is a link to the video here:
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