I am sorry but you will find no sympathy from me. I am a Street Artist. Prior to 2006 virtually no street artists were even considered for grants, let alone obtained them! Whilst Covent Garden Street Artists performed to millions of audience members each year (vastly more than that of all the arts council projects put together!) they never received a single penny of funding! In 2006 the Arts Council funded a FRENCH Street Arts company to the sum of £1.4m to produce a work in central London, so even when they were funding Street Arts, we were still being over looked! It was from 2007-9 that the Arts Council started heavily funding outdoor performances (still no funding for the Street Artists of Covent Garden and the South Bank though) and it was organisations such as the ones which are being cut, that were rapidly improvising outdoor programmes. Instead of approaching Street Performers as experienced performers in their respective field, they approached them as emergent artists and offered them performance slots alongside student groups and voluntary amateur dramatics societies. The paid work was still reserved for those performing indoors. However, the tide began to turn in 2009 with funding for Street Arts coming in from EU initiatives such as ZEPA and Interreg, things looked like they might be improving... and then in 2011 the recession caught up and as you can imagine the funding weakened and lessened... and now is virtually back to zero. We didn’t see any of the Olympiad funds, though we were invited to voluntarily perform at the Olympic Stadium, we didn’t see any of the Jubilee funds, though again we were invited to volunteer. Most street artists in this country have never received public funds, most have never even been eligible for public funding and yet collectively they perform to a larger audience than most other performing art forms, and certainly more regularly (Covent garden street performers perform an average 30-40 minute long show every hour for up to 10 hours a day) so! And whilst the monetary cost of street arts is significantly less than that of art forms which require studios and buildings, the cultural costs and stigmas are significantly more. How have the cuts affected me? Well I hope, now that we are in a similar situation, that they the cuts help remove some of that stigmatisation.

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I am sorry but you will find no sympathy from me. I am a Street Artist. Prior to 2006 virtually no street artists were even considered for grants, let alone obtained them! Whilst Covent Garden Street Artists performed to millions of audience members each year (vastly more than that of all the arts council projects put together!) they never received a single penny of funding! In 2006 the Arts Council funded a FRENCH Street Arts company to the sum of £1.4m to produce a work in central London, so even when they were funding Street Arts, we were still being over looked! It was from 2007-9 that the Arts Council started heavily funding outdoor performances (still no funding for the Street Artists of Covent Garden and the South Bank though) and it was organisations such as the ones which are being cut, that were rapidly improvising outdoor programmes. Instead of approaching Street Performers as experienced performers in their respective field, they approached them as emergent artists and offered them performance slots alongside student groups and voluntary amateur dramatics societies. The paid work was still reserved for those performing indoors. However, the tide began to turn in 2009 with funding for Street Arts coming in from EU initiatives such as ZEPA and Interreg, things looked like they might be improving... and then in 2011 the recession caught up and as you can imagine the funding weakened and lessened... and now is virtually back to zero. We didn’t see any of the Olympiad funds, though we were invited to voluntarily perform at the Olympic Stadium, we didn’t see any of the Jubilee funds, though again we were invited to volunteer. Most street artists in this country have never received public funds, most have never even been eligible for public funding and yet collectively they perform to a larger audience than most other performing art forms, and certainly more regularly (Covent garden street performers perform an average 30-40 minute long show every hour for up to 10 hours a day) so! And whilst the monetary cost of street arts is significantly less than that of art forms which require studios and buildings, the cultural costs and stigmas are significantly more. How have the cuts affected me? Well I hope, now that we are in a similar situation, that they the cuts help remove some of that stigmatisation.

Sam Howard , Artist , 19/12/12 , 495 AP
- Report
46659d56-0265-471a-8a53-a12c005f1e24

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