As the recession continues its grip on arts companies, small businesses and sole traders up and down the country, its noticeable that many of them are slowly disappearing without a murmur. We don’t think that’s a fitting way to say farewell to those many organisations who have contributed to our national cultural health – whether they’ve been around for 1, 10 or 50 years.
If you’d like to commemorate any arts organisation’s demise, please let us know here and we’ll compile a list of unfortunate souls who didn’t make out of the credit crunch, recession or economic downturn or whatever it’s called today. We’ll make a list which we’ll send onto the relevant organisations (local authorities, arts funders, charities and so on) to put them in the picture of who we’ve lost. If you can add details of a website, numbers of jobs lost, matched funding opportunities missed – and other useful, public quantitative data – that would be great too.
In memoriam:
A-Foundation, Liverpool
Activ8 Success, Birkenhead
Aspire Trust and Aspire Creative Enterprises
Audiences Central
Brewery Theatre, Taunton.
Contemporary Urban Centre (CUC), Liverpool
Durham City Art
The Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs
Flambard Press
Foursight Theatre Company
Jazz Action
Lanternhouse, Cumbria
Matthew Street Festival *gone but not forgotten, even though some of us would love to forget it and all it stood for”
Pacific Road Arts Centre, Birkenhead
Pele Productions
Quicksilver Theatre, London. Lost the funding after 34 successful years.
7 Sefton Libraries
Theatre Writing Partnership
Urban Strawberry Lunch
Whilst other organisations are not yet extinct, the combination of funding cuts at national and local levels is putting them under immense strain. Many organisations have seen massive staff cut backs or remaining staff giving their time for free in order to save the long term health of the company. Their efforts should not go un-noticed.
More at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17536195
A-Foundatation, Liverpool – http://afoundations.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/foundations-news.html
Wolstenholme Creative Space – http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/useful-information/2012/12/18/liverpool-art-and-music-hub-wolstenholme-creative-space-set-to-close-100252-32453415/
Thanks Emma!