Arts Councils shifts programme into Lottery budgets

• National Lottery
• Additionality

The Arts Council is the body which makes the decision on how lottery revenue and exchequer revenue is spent on the arts in Northern Ireland. In January it decided to move the General Art Awards and Artist Studio Scheme under National Lottery budgets. This move also means that the British Council which received a contribution from the Arts Council towards their work will now have to apply for funding from National Lottery programmes.

The move may been viewed as the Arts Council 'winning' the lotto to pay for previously government funded programmes.

The Arts Council's decision is seen as controversial as many argue it breaches the "additionality principle" where National Lottery funding should not substitute for exchequer funding. The House of Lords recently argued for greater enforcement of the additionality principle in debating the National Lottery Bill, and as such the government is expected to include amendments which reinforce the additionality principle in law.

In real terms this means that there is less lotto money available to new arts initiatives, projects and organisations. The very thing lotto funding is designed to fund.

Do you agree the Arts Council are in breach of additionality principle?

• General Arts and Artist Studio was funded by the exchequer revenue - From 2006 the same programme will be funded by the National Lottery.
• Annual Support of Organisation Programme (ASOP) exchequer funded.
• Multi-annual programme (MAP) Lottery funded. Introduced in 2005/2006 with same guidelines and application forms as the ASOP.
• Organisations previously funded under ASOP with an award up to £20,000 were made to apply for the Multi-annual programme resulting in 50 organisations now funded from National Lottery previously supported under exchequer funds.
• Threshold for MAP to rise to at least £30,000 for 2006/2007