Funders reject art group 'every time', leader says
BBCA non-profit arts group says it has been struggling to find funding and is relying on the community for venues to hold classes.
The Maidstone Arts Centre in Kent used to have its own site to host sessions for groups including neurodivergent children and adults, and people with dementia.
The group's director Saff Dunstan-Saffrey told BBC Politics South East she can no longer afford a dedicated base without further grants, but funders "reject us every time".
The government said its arts funding would "solidify the foundations of organisations so that they can keep working with their local communities and artists".
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced £1.5 billion in arts and culture funding on Wednesday 21 January, spread over five years.
"We know that arts venues are crucial to making people feel valued and represented within our national story," a spokesperson said.
Dunstan-Saffrey said that she had invited ministers and MPs to "come and see what we do" but to no avail.
When applying to organisations for funding she was often told that "unfortunately we've had a lot of applications this time", she said.
"If you could see the difference it makes to children, adults, people going through awful times in their life, people with dementia.
"If you could see what it actually did for them, you'd understand why the funding is so important."
X-ray photography artist Nick Veasey, who has a gallery in Lenham, said art could "change your mood" and was "a different sort of therapy", but there was also "the commercial side of it".
"The evidence is that funding generates money and jobs for the country," the artist said. "The arts generates jobs."
Veasey also warned that the arts was "a very hard industry to break into" for young people.
"You've got to give young people some sort of financial and moral support to give them the confidence to build up a great portfolio and find a little niche in the art world, just like I've done," he said.
Brighton Festival chief executive Lucy Davies said commercial parts of the industry "draw their talent from a very big ecosystem".
She said non-profits were "the risk factories" that were "truffling out that talent that then goes on to have such commercial success".
Davies told BBC Politics South East she supported regional control of funding, as a review of Arts Council England recommended in December, but "strategic thinking" was also needed.
She welcomed the government funding and said it "recognises that culture is the golden thread that runs through many, many strategic national ambitions".
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