Keyword: “Campaign for Cultural Democracy”

The chance to dream

Although not a major aspect of artists’ liveli­hoods, grants and awards to artists are a vital con­trib­u­tor to sus­tain­ing art prac­tices over a life-cycle. This paper starts by out­lin­ing the ben­e­fits of direct fund­ing to indi­vid­ual artists, describes dif­fer­ing arts pol­i­cy per­spec­tives on this in Eng­land over the last thir­ty years and pro­vides a case study of Arts Coun­cil Eng­land’s Grants for the Arts Scheme 2003 – 14 before mak­ing an argu­ment for new, nuanced, localised approach­es to nur­tur­ing and sup­port­ing the wider con­stituen­cy of visu­al artists and diver­si­ty of art prac­tices in future.

Read “The chance to dream: why fund individual artists?” in full