Artists having to take on several other jobs to pay the bills – Arts Council

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Artists in Northern Ireland are having to take on several other jobs in order to pay household bills, a Stormont committee has heard.

Roisin McDonough, chief executive of the Arts Council NI, also warned of a “haemorrhaging of talent”.

Addressing the Stormont committee which scrutinises the work of the Department for Communities, she said the body has made a bid for extra resources to the department.

According to figures released by the Arts Council last year, Northern Ireland spent £5.07 on arts funding per head of population in 2023/24, compared to £10.51 spent in Wales and £21.58 in the Republic of Ireland.

Ms McDonough said her organisation receives around £10 million a year from the department for its work to fund and develop the arts in Northern Ireland, and around £9 million from lottery funds.

“We wrote recently to the committee outlining the living and working conditions of our individual artists in Northern Ireland, and I think that tells a salutary tale in of itself about the relative poverty in which they find themselves as they struggle to make ends meet from their artistic endeavours,” she told MLAs.

“Many have to take several jobs in order to pay the routine household bills that everybody faces so we’re very concerned about the plight of those artists, and the haemorrhaging of talent from our part of the world which as we know has fantastic creativity.”

She said they are “very conscious of the macro fiscal climate that the Executive faces into”.

“To that extent, we believe our arts and creative organisations do make a contribution, as do other sectors, to the overall programme for government objectives and indeed to the department’s own objectives,” she said.

“We’re not pleading a special case but we’re saying we too make a contribution that is valid and needs to be recognised.”

Ms McDonough described her team at the Arts Council as “very small” with 47 members of staff, having lost 11 staff members in recent years.

“We are however having to deal with a 137% increase in funding applications to us, so that puts an enormous strain and really hampers the amount of engagement that we would wish that we could have in going out and about across Northern Ireland, encouraging applications from various organisations in local areas,” she added.