Pre-Budget Campaign 2025 – A Sustainable Future For the Arts

National Campaign for the Arts Pre-Budget 2025 Submission, September 2024

#SustainTheArts

Today the National Campaign for the Arts (NCFA), the volunteer-led grassroots movement making the case for the arts in Ireland, launch the NCFA Pre-Budget 2025 Submission which outlines twelve key asks of Government in their preparation of Budget 2025. The NCFA is calling on Government to ensure that Budget 2025 commits to creating a sustainable arts sector in Ireland, for the benefit of all society. In this submission, the NCFA outlines an urgent yet attainable investment strategy for Ireland’s art sector in 2025.

Our world and the systems that define it are transforming at a rapid pace. These significant changes can leave people feeling fearful and overwhelmed. In recent months, political discourse has been shaped by increasingly right-wing sentiment. What can be legitimate feelings of fear have been exploited to promote certain political agendas and ideologies. However, we cannot let fear, and those who would manipulate it, be our guide to the future. We must stand in our uncertainty and find strength as a community; we must begin making space for what could be, finding our curiosity, and drawing new maps that will help guide us through emerging possibilities. All of this takes courage. And all of this takes creativity. As a society, we need the arts and artists more than ever, in these times of rapid transformation. And yet, it has never been more challenging to survive as an artist or arts worker in Ireland.

The NCFA’s Pre-Budget 2025 Submission outlines 12 key points to integrate the arts deeply into Irish society:

1. Support Basic Income
2. Invest Meaningfully in the Arts: €160 million in funding to the Arts Council in 2025
3. Bring Irish Arts to the World: €10 million in funding to Culture Ireland in 2025
4. Nurture Communities: Retain current funding of Creative Ireland to 2027
5. Develop Housing Initiatives
6. Make Space for the Arts
7. Remove Barriers for Disabled Artists and Arts Workers
8. Address the Climate Emergency
9. Address the Lack of Diversity in the Arts
10. Implement Insurance Reform
11. Support Adequate Research in the Arts
12. Implement Taxation Reform

NCFA urges those with the power to shape the country’s future to invest in the arts, acknowledging their intrinsic and systemic value, committing to equitable funding through collaboration, and prioritising sustainability, diversity, and inclusion as concrete actions. NCFA’s call to stand by the arts community goes out to all Ministers and Departments, across Government on behalf of Ireland’s 55,000 strong arts community.

#SustainTheArts

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Help Make Sustain The Arts with these 3 actions:

1. TALK TO YOUR TD 

Contact your TD (https://www.whoismytd.com) and tell them how important the arts are to you. Read the National Campaign for the Arts Pre-Budget Submission and then to talk to your TDs in your own words about the points that are most relevant to you. Send an email, tag them on social media, call their constituency office.

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2. Get the #SustainTheArts message out

Are you an ARTIST, ARTS WORKER or an ARTS ORGANISATION:

• Share our #SustainTheArts social media images on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, tik tok, Facebook and all your social media channels, using #SustainTheArts and tag your local TDs
• We’re also asking you to take to social media to share a selfie or an expression of your work and use this text: “My name is… and I am an Artist/Arts Worker”. Again, tag your local TDs (https://www.whoismytd.com) and use #SustainTheArts

Are you an ARTS FAN? If you enjoy the arts, please add your voice to the campaign:

• Share our #SustainTheArts social media images on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, tik tok, Facebook and all your social media channels, using #SustainTheArts and tag your local TDs
• Tell us on your social media why you love the arts (the book that changed your life, the film that broke your heart, the gallery you treasure, the music that keeps you company, the performances that give you hope).
• Tag the NCFA (Twitter: @Campaign4Arts – Facebook: NCFAie – Instagram: @Campaign4Arts).
• Then tag your TD’s (https://www.whoismytd.com) and use #SustainTheArts

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3. Spread the Word

Talk to your friends and family about how important the arts are to you and ask them to do points 1 and 2 aboce

Some useful bits:

Here is a link to the National Campaign for the Arts Pre-Budget Submission.

Here is the email to get in touch if you have ideas or questions contact us here: info@ncfa.