Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): I invite the officials to make an opening statement. Thank you for coming.

Ms Nóirín McKinney (Arts Council of Northern Ireland): Thank you, Chairman. We thought it would be useful, since we made our submission and obviously given the changing financial climate, to update the Committee on where we are with our strategy, and then the impact of the cuts and our approach to the funding round for next year, which understandably is going to be very challenging. If you are content with that, that is what we propose to set out, Chairman.

Our strategy, ‘Ambitions for the Arts: A Five Year Strategic Plan for the Arts in Northern Ireland 2013-2018’, was just published in October. It sets out the Arts Council development plan for the arts over the five-year period. That went out to wide public consultation with the sector and through all of the equality screening processes and wider public consultation. We are pleased now that it is published. I do not know if you have had an opportunity to review it yet, but we have three themes: championing the arts, promoting access and building a sustainable sector. Flowing from that we have seven ambitions, which I will just touch on very briefly.

Making excellent art accessible to all: obviously it is the Arts Council’s job to invest in artistic excellence and present that work to as wide an audience as possible. Having said that, we do recognise the inequalities in access, especially among marginalised groups, so what we want to do with our funded organisations is continue targeted programmes. Also, the opportunities through technology, as we all know, are changing radically how we both create and consume art, and there are obviously access opportunities through that route.

We need to continue to support individual artists who create work of excellence, and I am sure you will agree that our artists have brought us great distinction for such a small region as Northern Ireland. We need critical platforms for them to be appreciated, here and abroad. Our support for the individual artist programme, and indeed our artist career enhancement scheme programmes, are essential for that. Artists have told us that they need that continual professional development as well. We want to be able to continue to invest in and nurture the talent that we have, and you all know the success stories. I was talking just on Monday to Jimmy Nesbitt, who started with the Ulster Youth Theatre — and what a wonderful acting career. There are so many other examples, as well as our wonderful writers.

We need to continue to core fund arts organisations. A strong infrastructure, of course, is essential for that public and community engagement in the arts, and the health and well-being of the key arts organisations, and improving their long-term creative and financial future is essential, but it is particularly challenging in the current budgetary context.

We want to help arts organisations to deliver benefits to our community. We do expect them, and indeed we set targets with our organisations, to proactively engage with communities, which they do. Some of them do absolutely excellent work in that capacity. We want them to continue dedicated interventions and outreach activities beyond conventional spaces, and particularly in areas where we’ve been doing some really important work that addresses disability, inter-cultural diversity, older people, and children and young people.

Of course, sadly, when budgets are cut, many have to protect their core work, and the corollary of that is that, often, outreach suffers. But we will be talking to the sector in earnest about that and assessing their applications on that basis, because we still expect to see a level of engagement, of course. That is so important.

We need to build more partnerships in the arts. We know that they do contribute significantly to other areas of public life, and we want to develop that potential through further strategic partnerships — with cultural tourism, for example, in education and learning, health, well-being and the economy.

And then, finally — sorry, almost finally — to support skills development. Core business skills are more important than ever, and you know we work very closely with Arts and Business. It was a key partner in helping to bring mentoring and tailored programmes in fundraising and cultural leadership. We need to continue that — in fact, we need to do even more in that regard. Also — and we are very pleased with this development — we are establishing, in partnership with the Creative and Cultural Skills Council, 100 creative apprenticeships across Northern Ireland. Our target is to have those in place by 2016, as well as paid internships.

Finally, we recognise the huge voluntary contribution to the arts in Northern Ireland. It is a huge movement. We want to continue to support and develop that, and we are hoping to sponsor a volunteering awards scheme that will celebrate excellence in the arts.

That is the ambition of the council clearly articulated. There is a lot more detail in the full document.

Turning to the financial context for 2015-16; just to give you a flavour of some of the high-level impacts of that, we have been directed to provide for a cut of 11·2% in baseline funding in 2015-16. Our baseline for 2014-15 is £12·3 million, so 11·2% off the baseline is £1·3 million — almost £1·4 million, in fact — which we have been charged to find.

The Arts Council is planning to implement those cuts through a combination of salaries within our own organisation; overheads, of course, where we can find them; and expenditure on the arts. As you know, we are primarily a grant-giving body, and 88% or so of our funding goes directly to the sector in grants. That is our largest area of expenditure.

This is going to result in a reduction in the level of service that the Arts Council provides to the arts sector and, obviously, our grants to arts organisations. That is the reality. Of course, that is going to have a negative effect on the development of the arts and the provision of the arts that we able to make available to the public. You will be aware, Chairman, that some very high-profile organisations have already indicated that they cannot maintain their present activities at existing funding levels. Further cuts may result in closures, and I really think that that is what we are facing. Smaller organisations, of course, will be similarly affected.

By reducing expenditure on the arts, it is likely that some organisations will cease to operate. I think that that is the reality that we are facing. Of course, that will impact on some of our ambitions in the areas that I have just mentioned. We know that the arts have a significant impact on the work of other Departments, in relation to tourism, urban and rural regeneration and social cohesion, and will impact on initiatives designed to promote equality and tackle poverty and social inclusion. We are very worried about that whole social agenda.

We will be facing cuts in Arts Council staffing, and indeed have effected some already. More importantly, there will be cuts in the arts sector. For example, a survey of our clients, undertaken by the Arts Council earlier this year indicated that cuts of 15% — and we were planning for worst-case scenarios that that point — would result in a loss of employment in the sector of around 500 jobs. That included artistic and core staff, but the way the sector is organised, they also employ a lot of casual staff; so, it is not just permanent but also casual staff. A lot of people are involved in the arts, and through the 119 organisations that we directly fund, about 5,000 people are employed. That is quite a large percentage.

Funding cuts, we fear, will also set back the ambitions to extend outreach work through innovative programmes which will encourage work in rural areas and areas of weak infrastructure, which, again, is a priority for us. As you will appreciate, it just exacerbates the existing inequalities in accessing the arts. That is also a huge concern.

The cuts will impact on promoting equality, tackling poverty and social inclusion. The full impact of the funding cut proposed in relation to equality, good relations and sustainable development we cannot yet assess or give you an accurate picture of, because our funding programmes, as you know, are on a competitive basis, and we are just in the process of inviting those applications in.

I am going to hand over to Lorraine, who will take you through our approach to the difficult funding round that we are facing for 2015-16.

Ms Lorraine McDowell (Arts Council of Northern Ireland): Just to remind members that when we were faced with the in-year cuts in 2014-15, we went to great pains to discuss this face to face with the sector and explain what this meant for them. We are continuing now, for 2015-16, to do that as well. We had a meeting just last week with 53, I think, of our funded clients, and this afternoon we will be meeting another 50 of them to explain our approach to 2015-16 and how we are going to do that.

The in-year cuts, you will remember, only affected the Exchequer-funded clients, and we had to salami-slice them, because there was no other way to do that. The board of the council has taken the view that we will not be salami-slicing as we move forward into 2015-16. We will be looking at the whole portfolio, whether they are Exchequer-funded or lottery-funded, and people will receive their awards based on the case they make. We are not asking them to reflect the cuts in their application to us, but rather to say to us what they need to actually deliver the programme that they want to deliver.

In previous years, we would have said, "Make your application. Show us what a 5% cut would mean, or a 10% cut." We are not doing that. We want to come up with a portfolio of clients — a balanced portfolio, as we are describing it — which will deliver the best outcomes and best meet the strategic objectives of the Arts Council.

As I say, there will be no salami-slicing at all, and I think that that has been welcomed by the sector. I think they feel that we are recognising that each of them delivers in a different way and that they each have different forms of working and ways of working, and that we will be passing that on to our board, which will make the decisions based on that.

The programme is currently open. It opened, I think, on 27 November, and it closes on 4 December. What we have done that we have not done in previous years is to also explain to the sector very carefully, in the guidance notes and in these public meetings, how we will be assessing their application in great detail and whether they meet our essential criteria, which are the artistic quality and public benefit, and whether they are sustainable and well governed, because it is really important that they are financially sustainable and have correct governance procedures in place.

We will also be looking at the wider portfolio requirements that we need to support a range of art forms. We need to keep that open. There has to be a geographic spread, albeit we understand that most organisations are based in Belfast, or to a smaller extent in Derry. We need to look at the spread of those organisations. We will also be looking at their size and type — small, large — and how key they are to the infrastructure. Some are umbrella organisations that provide services for others, and we need to look at the added value that they bring to the sector.

We also need to look at risk. Have they managed grants in the past, and are there issues about other sources of funding etc? What is the risk to our investment? We will take all of this into account — past performance and current ambition. What we need to do, even within the cuts that we have, is to leave room for the growth ambition. We could keep on a level playing field forever — just keep everybody standing still — but all organisations have ambitions to grow, and we need to create room within the budgets that we have to let people expand and develop, but only where they meet the strategic objectives.

As we said to them in the guidance notes for this programme; what we are looking for is that, where there are ambitions for growth, it is not just the Arts Council that they are coming to in order to fund that growth. We want to see leverage from other sources as well. Where they can show that they are actually actively seeking funding from other sources, they are more likely to get a positive response from us in potentially increasing their grant. However, it is clearly spelt out to them at these meetings that, if some people get an increase, others will get less, because there is a finite amount of money.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Thank you for your presentation. Some of that will relate very much to the discussion we will be having next Tuesday on budgets. However, there is an overlap between issues around budgets and the focus of the inquiry, in terms of access to the arts for people, particularly in working-class communities. I just want to pick up on two things, and then I will invite a number of folk here who have questions.

Of the £1·3 million, how much do you think at this stage — even a ballpark figure — could be saved in organisational costs, as opposed to cuts in grant aid to arts organisations?

Ms McDowell: We are still working on that at the moment. We are looking at our salary bill, and all the other —

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Is it 5%, 25% or 50%? I just have no idea, in terms of buildings or whatever.

Ms McDowell: We have looked at all of this as well. As I say, at the moment we are budgeting what 11·2% would look like if we had to do that in turn. Internally, could we match that? We do not believe that is possible, just by the nature of it. We are in premises, and we have discussed whether we could move out of those premises, but we are on a lease that takes us to another point, so the savings would never be achieved in 2015-16. We are continuing to look at this, but I cannot actually give you figures yet.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Let me pick up on a couple of phrases there, Lorraine. You used the phrase, of an arts organisation:

That struck me. When Nóirín was talking about outreach — that this is what the organisation does, and then there is the outreach, or the extra bit; does that show a mindset whereby people say, "We do what we want to do, and we are expected to do outreach?" Or, are they asking themselves, in terms of sustainability, "If our offer was slightly different in some way from what it is now, would we get more people in? Would we have more earned income? Would our dependence on grant aid be less?" I think there is a question there, just from personal experience. I have gone to arts events where there were six students looking at an art exhibition, and it had not really reached beyond the people who came round from the art college. I have gone to other things that clearly were drawing in an audience that probably would not necessarily have been regular theatregoers. That was because there was an event put on — a programme, a play or a performance — that struck a chord with them in some way.

Ms N McKinney: Yes, that is critical question, especially given the ambitions that we have set out in our strategy. We are working with organisations to set benchmarks for the level of community outreach and engagement that they do. Again, in this year’s scoring, we will deem it unacceptable if they are reducing their current levels, even though we are facing cuts. In fact, we want them to at least maintain the baseline of that work, and, indeed, develop it.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Is it that they should be doing outreach, or is it that the thing you are reaching out to bring the people to should be slightly different? Maybe there is an issue there where they need to question and challenge what is happening in the theatre, centre or whatever.

Ms N McKinney: The point that I would make about that, if we take the Lyric Theatre as an example, is that it has a core programme. It is a repertory theatre. It has a programme of very high-quality work being presented throughout the year. It does have a wonderful education and outreach programme attached to that, but it is dependent. It will make an amount of funding available from our core grant to it, but it is also dependent on other trusts and foundations to help it develop that work, because there is a fixed cost in maintaining the theatre and presenting the actual core programme, around which, of course, there should be an access programme.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): What I am getting at is, should the core programme be looked at to say, "Is it the right core programme? Would we have more people coming in, and therefore more earned income, if our core programme was slightly different in some way, and we added a bit to it that maybe is not there at the moment?"

Ms McDowell: Most of our arts organisations do that on a regular basis. They do see the value of the education, not just in terms of its social side but also in earned income. I think that is a regular part of the planning process of most organisations.

Just to follow up slightly on what you said at the beginning about the number of people who turn up to things. When you are faced with cuts of this type, often the first thing to go is the marketing and PR budget. People see that as an add-on. In a way, some work is reduced because they cannot get the information out to the sectors that they want to. However, our organisations are extremely good at targeting sectors of the population that they need to bring in. The recent surveys show that there is a large number of specifically targeted activities for children and young people or those in socially and economically deprived areas. That is showing up in the surveys that we are doing with our clients. They are very good at targeting specific areas.

Ms N McKinney: There are some organisations, and I gave the example of the Lyric there, but look at Partisan Productions or Spanner in the Works. They are doing work that is completely socially engaged. It is about social issues. It is about issues that affect communities and young people in their everyday lives. Spanner in the Works has taken a key production, which has had great critical acclaim, about human trafficking. It has toured widely. It is a gruelling piece of work. It is going to the United States; they have been invited to present to a festival there.

For some organisations, that is their core work, but not every organisation. The core work of an orchestra is orchestral music, but around that they do wraparound programmes making that accessible. They have a wonderful arrangement with Ulsterbus, which brings people from isolated rural communities who happen to be older people to their concerts. They have all sorts of workshops for younger people. They are doing that work, but their core product, so to speak, is the provision of orchestral music of the highest quality. It is difficult to see how they could change that.

We have a lot of theatre companies in particular who are working in areas which are around difficult, issue-based subject matter, which is relevant, as I say, to young people in specific communities within Northern Ireland. Inter-culturalism comes into that also. That is just within one art form.

Of course, there are other examples, but it is a little more difficult. Think of the Grand Opera House: it is wonderful and presents a showcase for a lot of West End theatre, which is more entertainment-based; but that is still an offering that audiences want to participate in. Certainly, when they had ballet and opera in, there were very extensive education programmes to bring young people through the whole process of presenting an opera, doing workshops and master classes etc. I do not think, in some cases, you can or should change the product, but there are some organisations who are totally engaged in work of a different nature.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): I think it is probably a conversation we will continue, because I am still not fully convinced that all of the organisations necessarily buy in to that. I think there are issues around the content, in some cases. The choice of play, or the choice of theme for an event, does not strike a chord as it might.

Mr Humphrey: Thank you both very much for your presentation. Do the budget cuts provide the council with an opportunity to join up more with organisations, or indeed local councils, particularly new councils with their bigger budgets, because of the economies of scale and the bigger rate base that they have? Has the board discussed that?

Ms N McKinney: We have, William. Again, in the strategy, we have the ambition, and we see an opportunity, indeed, to work with the super-councils in a more constructive way. Rather than, as previously, trying to ensure that all 26 maybe had an arts and culture plan, we will be talking about 11, and we want to help facilitate that.

We already have a very good, close working relationship with Belfast and Derry, which may be less surprising given their scale. They have been the largest councils. That said, Derry still does not have an arts and culture plan, but Belfast does. We have a joint chapter, and we have regular conversations about where we can share programming. Indeed, we have the creative and cultural Belfast fund, which was a joint fund between us of £900,000 to support large-scale and medium-scale major civic events with an arts focus. That has proved to be very successful.

We are doing a similar scheme with Derry, so we do work in partnership. However, I am sure you will appreciate that in Northern Ireland there has been a bit of a historical anomaly, if I can call it that. Funding from local authorities in England is very different from the level of funding through our own local authority areas. It is simply much less in local authority funding for the arts here. We would love to work with them to get those budgets up and to invest more, because in reality what it means, especially in Belfast, where we have a number of the large companies, is that this is their base. In London, Manchester etc, the local authority jointly shares those costs, whereas in Northern Ireland the arts budgets through the local authorities are so limited that the Arts Council is providing all of the public funding to those venues. Again, the orchestra has a different model here —

Mr Humphrey: It is largely Belfast that is taking the heavy lifting in many of the things you are talking about, including the Ulster Orchestra.

Ms N McKinney: Indeed. But the closest example, if we focus on the orchestra for a minute, is Wales. As you know, it is a very different model. In the UK, there are the BBC orchestras. In Scotland, the arts council — Creative Scotland — does not support the orchestra at all, and neither does Creative Scotland. In Wales, the Welsh Arts Council puts in £800,000, and the BBC, through the licence fee, puts in over £4 million. The rest is made up from earned income. So, we have a completely different model, and the local authority funding there is also of a much greater level. We are a little bit of an anomaly because we have a different relationship with the BBC, and it is not a BBC orchestra, but the Arts Council has been the large-scale funder.

Mr Humphrey: Has the council or its board discussed with the BBC — and we had Lord Hall in front of the Committee a few weeks ago, and mention was made of the BBC. Largely what he was saying was that contributions come from the BBC in terms of buying concerts. Obviously, in the other nations the BBC is making such a heavy contribution to their orchestras and because they are BBC orchestras. Has that been explored? Has the council had conversations with the BBC about BBC Northern Ireland putting more into what effectively is Northern Ireland’s orchestra, not Belfast’s?

Ms N McKinney: Absolutely. There have been a number of iterative meetings, and indeed our chairman met Lord Hall as well. We met Peter Johnston last week, and really it seems that the first opportunity for a review of the relationship would be the charter review in 2016, although we have asked Peter Johnston again, as indeed has the Department, if he can go back to the director general to see if there is any leeway in-year. I think they feel that it is particularly difficult for them to make an increase in-year.

Mr Humphrey: You talked about lottery funding and how that is used to go out. I think that you, Lorraine, talked about Exchequer funding and lottery funding. I understand that lottery sales are down, and I think that is because they put the price up. What are the implications? Are there implications? Have you lost money from the National Lottery?

Ms McDowell: No, we have not actually lost it. We obviously lost it during the Olympics, when we were top-sliced, and in year we just had what we described as a windfall, because we got £400,000 back unexpectedly as a result of money being left over from the Olympics. However, the forecasts that we are receiving show a very slight increase in lottery funding over the next four years. We are not expecting a decrease on that side.

Mr Humphrey: Finally, Lorraine, you were talking about balance. I think it is very important that the balance across the city, across Northern Ireland and across the cultures is struck so that every section of the community can see the Arts Council for Northern Ireland as their arts council, delivering their culture and their arts.

Ms McDowell: We absolutely agree with you. In my initial remarks I was talking about the annual funding programme, which is for the larger annually funded organisations. They tend to be concentrated. If you look at our funding overall through all our programmes, including the lottery programmes, you will see the spread of activity throughout Northern Ireland. We are very conscious of that need, and every year we analyse where our funding went to what were the 26 local authorities. We then concentrate the following year on going out to those areas where they have not had any money or we have not had applications.

Mr Humphrey: I am not talking just about geography, though; I am talking about culture.

Ms McDowell: No, absolutely. We are also very conscious of a complete spread of art forms. We look at all those relationships and at where our funding is going. So, within this balanced portfolio, as I described it, we are very clear that we need to look at all art forms and cultures.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Would it be possible to get up-to-date figures on the spend of the current 26 councils per head of population?

Ms McDowell: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): It is quite a few years since I saw that. I remember that, at that time, there was a disparity of around 25:1. Councils like Belfast were putting in about £10 per head, and I remember that somewhere or other was putting in about 43p.

Mr Humphrey: A certain council was 37p.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): It was 37p or whatever. As councils are moving forward, it would be useful if that information were out there in the thinking.

Ms N McKinney: It will not have changed very dramatically, Chairman.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): It might be up to 38p by now.

Mr Dunne: Thanks very much for your presentation. As someone new to the Committee, I am still on the learning curve.

I have just a couple of issues. Can you give us some feedback on a couple of the main issues that came up during the Committee’s inquiry into broadening out the appeal of the arts to all classes? One is the transport to arts facilities and the difficulty of getting access. Many feel that the arts are "not for me". I know that you touched on those issues a bit already, and I think brief answers would be appreciated, so do not get too alarmed.

Ms N McKinney: Lorraine may pick up on the transport issue, because we have a couple of schemes for that. On people saying that the arts are "not for me", I can say that we run surveys, and we have actually just finished this year’s general population survey that has a component on arts and culture in Northern Ireland. That told us that, basically, of the factors preventing adults from engaging in the arts between the 2004 and 2014 surveys, time constraints represent an increasingly prominent barrier. Difficulty in finding time has significantly increased from 27% to 41% in 2014. That seems to be a main barrier. We are very aware, of course, that there are all sorts of other barriers, such as ticket prices or maybe intellectual access, which is why the education and outreach and participatory programmes are so important. We work with Arts and Business on a scheme called Test Drive the Arts, where the target was to have 20,000 people going to see an arts performance for the first time. That is basically a free-ticket scheme to incentivise people, to do feedback and evaluation with them and then to ask whether they would go again. It is an incentive scheme. I mentioned the orchestra’s transport scheme.

Ms McDowell: I was just about to say that Nóirín already referred to that. An organisation the size of the orchestra can actually do that to get people in. In our own programme, we allow for transport costs for disadvantaged groups; that is, those that might fall within the section 75 categories, for instance. Organisations can actually include the costs of bringing people in to their workshops and participatory programmes etc. Unfortunately, we cannot control Translink and have proper services going round the countryside late at night, but our organisations are certainly looking at inventive ways of bringing individuals in.

Mr Dunne: And at bringing the arts to the people — physically.

Ms McDowell: Yes, indeed.

Mr Dunne: The other issue, which William mentioned, is the Ulster Orchestra. I think that we are all very concerned about that. The Holywood Music Festival is on this week. I was at its launch, where I was heavily lobbied about the Ulster Orchestra. I think it has gone out of its way to promote its culture anywhere and everywhere, such as schools, shopping centres, community centres and so on and so forth. What more can you do to support the Ulster Orchestra? Obviously, you can lobby us today, and we will lobby the Department and so on, but I think it is critical that we work together to try to see a future for the Ulster Orchestra.

Ms N McKinney: Indeed. Of course, we share that view. You probably know that, over the past three years, our funding has been reduced from £2·2 million to £1·8 million. That was a reduction with incrementals that was planned with the Ulster Orchestra. That is a 15% reduction, because we simply could not continue to sustain the orchestra at that level. I gave you some examples of how models work differently. We are, by far, the only arts council on these islands supporting any orchestra to that level. It is absolutely worth it, but we had to do the planned reduction to allow us to have some other growth in music, which was suffering. That is because, when you take the orchestra out of the portfolio, you find that the rest of our spend on music is actually very small.

The orchestra is critical. It provides a huge service, and it brings very high standards of professional music making and teaching, and, indeed, employment, across Northern Ireland. However, we set it that agenda, and unfortunately, over the past three years, given the economic climate etc, it has simply found it very difficult to, first, bridge that gap, and, secondly, get to the next stage of its development. Basically, an orchestra of that scale needs about £4 million to run per year. Not all of that will come from the public purse, as its earned income is actually somewhere around £600,000 to £700,000. If we want a symphony orchestra, the rest has to come, really, from the public purse. The challenge is to make up the gap. The orchestra has an immediate problem, which has been very much in the public domain, and it is that, by 15 December, it has to decide whether it is a going concern. It feels that it needs a £500,000 immediate one-off payment to allow it to continue as a going concern.

Going forward, the orchestra will require approximately another £800,000. That is given the reduction that we have passed on and the reduction in real terms from the BBC, which also had cuts through Radio 3, although it did not pass on the full scale of those cuts in Northern Ireland, as it was very conscious of the delicate funding relationship. With the city council, we know that a request is in, and the shadow council is meeting on 5 December, I think, to determine whether and how much it might be able to bring to the £500,000 question.

The question about the future sustainability of the orchestra is one for the wider Executive and is certainly one that the Minister is very conscious of. We are meeting the orchestra today.

We will give a further update to the Department as soon as we have that meeting.

Those are the figures that we are looking at, and if this Committee shares the vision for sustaining this model of excellence and of Northern Ireland having a symphonic orchestra, which you obviously do, we ask that you be part of that consideration about the ongoing need and the gap in funding to sustain the orchestra.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): From what you say about the orchestra, I am just thinking that, setting aside the Northern Ireland budget, if the BBC centrally in London was commissioning work from the Ulster Orchestra to the same level as Wales, you would probably be talking about an extra £2 million coming in to the Ulster Orchestra's budget. That is £2 million that would solve its problems. As you say, it would also mean that, given that you are sustaining them at a higher level than other arts councils, you would have money free to support other art forms. The fact is that all of us in Northern Ireland — most of us, anyway — are paying our television licence to the BBC the same as everyone else in the UK, and we are entitled to the same standard of service. I think the challenge is not to wait until 2016; we should be getting that now. There is an impression that a London-centric view of the world that dominates a lot of institutions is not a good way for the United Kingdom, or an organisation that is spread across the United Kingdom, to operate.

Ms N McKinney: We do not disagree, Chairman. Again, if this Committee can help with that discussion with the BBC, that would be very helpful. I think that there is a recognition locally, of course, of the importance of and the very high-quality product that they get, but really it put in £640,000. That is on the record. So, it is a relatively small investment.

Mr B McCrea: On the BBC issue, it seems that you are unduly sympathetic to Peter Johnston saying that things were difficult in year.

Ms N McKinney: I did not intend to give that impression. I was just stating the fact from a recent meeting.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): Basil, I think it is important to draw the distinction between what the Northern Ireland bit of the BBC puts in and this money that should be coming from the London bit of the BBC.

Mr B McCrea: Absolutely. I just think that there is an issue. The trouble is that we have two conversations that overlap. One is the thematic one that we are looking at, which is the working-class inclusion bit. The other is that there is actually a crisis as well. I suppose the argument that I would like to hear is whether we really need to have a participatory arts programme or whether we can rely upon the emerging technologies, such as large-screen televisions showing symphony orchestras, or cinemas or things like that, or more popular culture. Are we trying to push water up a hill?

Ms N McKinney: I do not think so. That would be my personal opinion. I think that, as wonderful as those initiatives are, such as opera in the park and, indeed, opera in the city, and as wonderful as it is that we can all access that high quality, nothing can replace live performance. For me, that would really be detrimental to the performing arts and the future of live music.

Mr B McCrea: But why is that a problem?

Ms N McKinney: It is experiential. I just think that live performance and actually being part of an audience together in that shared environment, hearing the music first-hand and seeing the musicians at work, being able to appreciate more of the skill that is involved in that, and that shared experience, which can be very emotional, is —

Mr B McCrea: Taking it separately to things like choirs, it gets really difficult to get choirs together now. People will not sing in church or whatever. It is difficult, but there is no shortage of participants or funding for the really top national choirs. So there is a model that we are now moving to, which seems to be that the public demand only the very best, and the way that you get that is through recordings or whatever. I am not sure that we have won the argument, other than to say that you personally, or maybe me personally, believe it. There is no compelling evidence that going to the theatre gets a sort of a sea change in people’s attitudes. Or is there? How do we substantiate what we have just been saying here, which is that it is a good thing if you turn up and see it in person?

Ms N McKinney: There is evidence and surveys. You might recall that Feargal Sharkey was the music guru or the music champion for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). His whole remit was to preserve the future of live music. So, there certainly is evidence, but things like that are more longitudinal. Developed audience surveys, including taking people’s opinions and getting those testimonials, are important. We have many testimonials, and I am sure that all 10,000 people who have signed up to the Save the Ulster Orchestra campaign would be able to give testimonials about why they want to hear and experience it.

Mr B McCrea: Item 2.15 in your submission says that:

On the face of it, you could not be doing much more to engage with working-class communities.

Ms N McKinney: I think our point is that, with the cuts that we are facing, those impressive figures are under threat and could be eroded. We are pleased with those figures, and we have re-tested them through this year’s regularly funded organisations survey (RFO), which is still showing a very high percentage of engagement in deprived communities.

Mr B McCrea: I suspect that that is a statistical thing. It is just saying that many cultural areas or arenas will be downtown and therefore pretty close to super output areas that are not terribly good. "Good" is probably the wrong word — "challenged" might be better.

Ms McDowell: That is geographically based. That is the location, and we fully accept that that figure shows the location of those venues that, as you say, might be in deprived areas. However, there are also figures to show the level of engagement by people from deprived areas at those venues, which is quite impressive.

Mr B McCrea: I saw some of the issues going back further down, but I just think that there is an issue in that we have to talk about the real amount of money that we are talking about for engagement with people who are not traditionally engaged and whether that is the right way to go about things. Can I just bring you to another figure that stuck out? You mentioned that your per capita expenditure is £6·83 or something like that.

Ms McDowell: That is right, yes. It sounds right.

Mr B McCrea: How does that compare with other regions in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland?

Ms N McKinney: We have stopped doing the per capita comparison, because the funding mix across other regions has become much more complex. For example, in Scotland the Executive core fund some of the major institutions, and Creative Scotland also picks up some of that. It is difficult to calibrate which figures you actually include in that, and each region has different ways of doing that.

Mr B McCrea: But this is a job that you should be doing. We had a presentation earlier from our Research and Information Service. I do not know what the figure was, but I am sure they would be happy to share it with you. They showed a chart that said that Northern Ireland’s per capita expenditure was £7·20 but Scotland’s was £14·03. It said that Ireland was £10 and England and Wales were almost £12.

On the basis of those figures, somebody is not making the argument for arts in Northern Ireland.

Ms N McKinney: DCAL asked us not to do the per capita figures on that basis, because it felt that they were —

Mr B McCrea: Who asked you that?

Ms McDowell: It was an instruction from the Department. In previous years, we would have come to the Committee with the comparator figures. I think there was a slight disjoint between how the Department thought we calculated the figures and how we calculated them, and the Department asked us, or instructed us, not to do the comparative figures, saying that it would do them.

Mr B McCrea: That is bizarre. I presume that we can deal with this at the end of the session, Chair. I would like to see whatever written material you have. I have never heard such nonsense in my life. In any case, you should not have agreed.

Ms N McKinney: The figures were then disputed, and we were instructed that they were not robust enough to be used.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): It is good to see a biddable arm’s-length body.

Mr Humphrey: Being twisted.

Mr B McCrea: We need to look, because I think that this is where the two things overlap, even to the extent that you are looking at this, because the Committee will ask you. Your statement that you were already making a bigger contribution to the Ulster Orchestra than anybody else is against a backdrop of you getting roughly 50% of the funding of anybody else.

Ms N McKinney: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): I think we are getting too far away. There is a connection between resources — I made the point myself — and the subject of the inquiry, but we got a good bit of information about the Ulster Orchestra. It will feed into our discussion on Tuesday about the budget and the ongoing work with the Ulster Orchestra. I will call a halt there.

Mr Cree: Just a quick one, ladies. Obviously money is what the whole thing is about all the time anyway, but in your report to us you refer to the UK City of Culture legacy for Londonderry; that is, the £900,000. Does that come out of the budget that has been allocated to you from the Department?

Ms McDowell: No. Our £450,000 of that is from our lottery resources.

Mr Cree: Some of it is from the lottery.

Ms McDowell: There is £450,000 from Derry City Council’s own resources, and we have put our lottery resources into £450,000 of it.

Mr Cree: Right, so you are not taking any. Because there is a separate budget heading for that.

Ms McDowell: The Department’s legacy budget and ours are not the same thing.

Mr Cree: I just wanted to make sure that there was no double funding there — or counting twice.

Ms McDowell: No.

Mr D Bradley: Thanks very much for your presentation; I apologise for not being in at the start. You said that criteria were artistic merit, geographic spread, areas of growth and development, match funding and risk. What about the departmental priorities of promoting equality, tackling poverty and promoting inclusion? Do they come into the mix when we speak about the criteria?

Ms N McKinney: They do, Dominic, but through various drafts, we worked very closely with the Department in the articulation of the five-year plan. The Minister has signed off the strategy, so her priorities are well articulated to her satisfaction in the strategy. Our clients have to tell us how they help us to meet our strategy and, in particular, community engagement and the other areas that we mentioned. We feel they have to demonstrate to us how they will best help us to meet our strategy, which has been approved and includes the Minister’s priorities, if that makes sense.

Mr D Bradley: So they are still in the mix.

Ms N McKinney: Yes.

Mr D Bradley: You said that cuts will hit hard in rural areas where there is weak arts infrastructure and that that will exacerbate an already unequal situation. Should you not include the rural element in the criteria as well?

Ms N McKinney: We will look at geographic spread, and it is our job to try to balance provision across Northern Ireland. However, as Lorraine said, our annual funding programme tends to be for the bigger anchor organisations, if we can call them that — the orchestra, the Lyric, the MAC, and the Millennium Forum. That does not include Cookstown, but areas where there is central provision. It tends to fall in Belfast and Derry, although not exclusively, but those are the large centres where the main arts organisations certainly have their headquarters and venues. A lot of those organisations bring work to more rural areas, of course. That is again where we can engage more, hopefully, with the local authorities on their buying touring product. The Ulster Orchestra will perform anywhere, but a lot of the more rural venues cannot afford it. NI Opera is touring regularly. Our theatre and dance companies are bringing very good work to the network of arts centres across Northern Ireland, but that is an ongoing challenge.

Understandably, there is not the same level of infrastructure in the more rural areas, but touring is essential. We recently launched our Northern Ireland touring scheme, whereby music organisations are touring much more widely. We also have our cross-border touring scheme with our colleagues in the South. We have a reciprocal arrangement. If an organisation from, say, Dublin comes to perform in Belfast, we will pick up the cost of that tour, and vice versa. Our companies are touring across the border also. Touring within Northern Ireland is very important, and some of our organisations are doing that very well. The challenge for local authorities and more rural areas is in being able to develop an audience for more contemporary work, and there is also the cost of bringing that level of provision in to consider. It is not cheap to bring the orchestra, for example.

Mr D Bradley: Just one final question. You said there that you got a windfall of lottery funding post-Olympics but that you expected a flattening out of the lottery money over the next three to five years. I know that a private-sector organisation, Arts and Business, is involved, but to what extent has the arts sector in Northern Ireland fully exploited the potential of private patronage?

Ms McDowell: I think the sector has done really well in looking at this. A recent survey showed that the clients that we support through the annual funding programme have raised almost £20 million of earned income, which is what they get through box office and merchandising, etc. However, they also go out and look at sponsorship, donations, trusts and foundations, and they have raised almost £2·5 million. That sector is very difficult. As you will understand, the private sector is not in a position to fund as it used to, but Arts and Business works extremely well in the amount of money it leverages in by promoting those relationships between the organisations and the private sector. There are figures on the leverage that it has, although I just do not have them with me at the moment.

Mr D Bradley: So we are sort of at the capacity at the moment.

Ms McDowell: It is really difficult, at this point, to find sponsorship, but we are keen to encourage the trusts and foundations applications. We think there is potentially a little bit more on that side than in the private-sector sponsorship.

The Chairperson (Mr McCausland): I think that we have covered all the questions that members have. Again, I thank you for coming and for your insights into the arts today.