ESC President: More sustainable arts funded should be put on next term's agenda

Friday 13 December 2024

Education, Sport & Culture is likely to hand over an instruction for its successor to look at how the island's arts are funded.

In 2022, Jersey committed to investing 1% of its government’s overall spend to arts, culture and heritage.

Investigating alternative investment models in Guernsey has not been a priority this term because of the current finances of the island, ESC President Andrea Dudley-Owen said in answering questions from Deputy John Gollop during this week's States meeting.

Deputy Gollop asked whether the committee would like to see a more sustainable investment model looked at next term, or at least make the preparations for that in the handover.

"I think that that would be something that the committee would be very receptive to considering," said Deputy Dudley-Owen.

"Obviously, the resources that we have are limited in the time that we have in this term is also limited.

"We realise that there has been significant, and rightly so, attention on the education side of the mandate. We also know that as we have an Arts Commission and a Sports Commission, that actually heritage and culture also needs to have some attention as well. That is certainly something that I would be recommending is looked at by the future iteration of the committee next term."

Pictured: Deputy John Gollop was immortalised by artist Ross Le Brun for the current Guernsey Arts Open competition.

One suggestion is that the arts is seen more as an economic enabler, and could even sit with the Economic Development committee.

Deputy Gollop sits on Policy & Resources. He asked whether ESC could stimulate more charitable giving, sponsorship and philanthropy to support Guernsey arts and other musical cultural arts organisations, to ensure arts have a future in the island.

"The committee sought, via its 2025 Budget submission, additional funding for Guernsey Arts to enable it to achieve just this. The request was not supported by Deputy Gollop's committee," said Deputy Dudley-Owen.

"The committee continues to work with grant funded organisations to determine how they can be better supported in and maximize the benefits of their fundraising efforts to increase their activities and their reach.

"But we have to accept the reality that the more we constrain the State spending in these areas, the greater the competition for grants, sponsorship and philanthropic giving will constrain the growth of this area."

Deputy Dudley-Owen also said that she believed that there should be ring-fencing in her committee's budget, so the education, sport and culture sides can then grow according to their individual needs rather than cross subsidising each other.