WEATHERING THE STORM!

Hi everyone!

It's been a difficult summer for everyone, with too many rainy days and too little sunshine but here at New Belfast, the skies are beginning to clear at last. We have secured funding to take our programme forward, thanks to both Belfast City Council and the Arts Council of N Ireland, which has just offered us a package that will see our core projects operate over the rest of the financial year. Both Poetry in Motion (Community and Schools) should be running in the new year too, all being well. Thank you BCC and ACNI.

 

As everyone concerned with the arts here understands only too well, the funding climate is becoming more stormy all the time with forecasts for more gloomy days ahead. N Ireland lags far behind all our neighbours in terms of how much government spends on the arts per head of population. Without a real shift in this climate, the outlook will remain quite bleak. Long range forecasters tend to dwell on the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review that will outline how much of the overall budget for N Ireland goes to the arts (and all the other government departments for that matter). Divining the weather is an imperfect science at the best of times and no one can be sure of better days ahead but for many, a chink in the clouds can be enough to offer an optimistic outlook. Soon we should hear ministers tell us what to expect for the next three years; keep a 'weather-eye' on that news.

 

As far as our work on the Re-Imaging Communities Programme goes, that too has seen its fair share of turbulence but we are hoping that the plans that we are currently involved in putting together for City Council will see positive developments for a lot of communities around the city.

 

On a more personal level, its been just over a year since we lost our good friend and colleague Geoff Harden. As anyone who has experienced a loss will know, anniversaries are very sad occasions and our thoughts go out to Geoff's family at this time. Myself and some music journalist friends of Geoff have set up an organisation to help archive the huge amount of recordings that he amassed over the years. The first results of this activity are available to the public at Central Library in Belfast and there will be much more to come.

 

This Autumn, New Belfast will be programming workshop activity across the city and bringing participative arts to as many communities as we can accommodate. We sent out expression of interest forms to groups before the summer and the responses to those will form part of the selection process that our consortium/management board will be conducting. Groups still interested in taking part should complete their form and return it to us as quickly as possible. We stress that we cannot guarantee places on the programme because we only have a finite budget. Please also bear in mind that only community groups from Belfast City Council wards are eligible for the grant-aided projects (Belfast Wheel, Trash Fashion, This is Me and Masque) that are offered free to user groups. Some groups designated as disability support groups from the greater Belfast area can apply for places on the Side by Side project however. Again, sadly, there is only a finite number of places available on this project as well. If you have any queries about anything please get in touch.

 

I'll try to offer the website a few thoughts from time to time and keep you updated with how things are going.

 

So, while there will inevitably be periods of gloom, they say its always darkest before the dawn.