Government funding, trickle-down or invest?

The announcement from the movement to fund the arts and events to the sum of 1.57 billion is welcome news. Remembering the decimation of arts funding in 2010 it is good to see this package brought through.

Now, this money is fantastic but the real question is - where will this money go?

Should it be poured into the West End, for crowds of tourists to buy tickets for musicals and elitist theatre? Or is there an opportunity to invest in the process of theatre, the art form itself, because from this art form, creativity flourishes. 

This year, graduates from performing arts courses will be worried that there will be no work as an actor or performer for a long time. This may be true but it has not stopped many from using these skills within the creative industries. 

There are two types of creative, the ones with the hands and the ones with the head. Theatre skillsets lean to the head and our industry needs these people, as Jerzy Grotowski said:  

 ‘’ Art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light.’’ 

The creative process differs with the art form but spending 3 years creating, devising new ideas and taking direction and constructive criticism are skills that keep the engine of creative agencies moving.

There is an opportunity for some of this money to go back to the process. These skill sets are valuable in businesses regardless of what the school system told their students!

Places like the Contact Theatre are experts at driving creativity through enterprise and have had great success in doing so. 

The more we can fund creative avenues, highlight the skill sets needed in business and open the door to more creatives the better we can become. And as an economy, we should invest in the fringe, smaller productions and arts centres as these places breed entrepreneurship and creative confidence.

As creative agencies, we can learn to harness these skills, take the best bits and add them to our creative teams. So ask yourself - what can you do to keep creativity alive?