One Year on from losing our NPO Funding - a message from Dash Arts Executive Director, Moya Maxwell

One year on from learning that Dash Arts had lost its funding, we’ve reflected on the past year and how Dash and its people have coped.

On the one hand, remarkably well – we have secured funding that has allowed us to start the R&D for 3 new shows, which for Dash Arts, means embarking on a series of workshops with artists and community groups. As part of this, we’ve been working the length and breadth of England delivering speech writing workshops in community centres, prisons, theatres and schools.

Of course, this year we have been cushioned somewhat by the ACE transition fund, which has bought us time (as it is supposed to do) to find other funders and rewrite the business model.   But it is a very tough landscape currently - and replacing funding is challenging and requires organisations to look beyond their traditional sources of income.  Becoming financially resilient requires developing a base of individual donors, creating commercial income streams and being very strategic about which trusts and foundations to approach.

Every week we read of arts organisations closing because they’ve been unable to replace the lost NPO funding – organisations which were well run, were doing creative and innovative work, were serving their communities, but the combined onslaught of COVID/lock-down, rising costs and lack of funding have proved terminal.  It is the most tough landscape for arts and cultural organisations and we know that there are likely to be more victims in the coming months.

So what help do we and organisations like us, need?   We need our grant givers to pay promptly, not to make us wait months for payment after submission of a report.  We would love it if trusts and foundations would give us feedback on a failed application, so we can understand why it wasn’t successful.  And we need to work together and look at ways in which we can share our limited resources to cut down on our overhead costs, for example.

And we need to keep shouting about our value to society – as place makers, as catalysts for change, as thought-provokers, as confidence builders, as story-tellers, as employers, as artists, as apprentices, as freelancers, as venue hirers, as equipment buyers, as transport bookers, as service providers.

We are not a ‘nice to have’, we are a vital part of the economy.

You can play a small part in helping us this week by supporting our Big Give Campaign To Build Our Public House, where your impact is doubled at no extra cost.