What Next Midlands says ‘it will be particularly important for regional voices to be heard so that the Committee gets a balanced view. We hope as many as possible will be able to make a submission.’

For more information from What Next, see below:- 

CMS INQUIRY - Suggestions for submissions

The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee have announced that they will be conducting a short inquiry into the work of the Arts Council. They are asking arts organisations to submit written evidence to them by 24^th February. More information is available here.

The CMS Committee is a group of cross-party, backbench MPs whose remit is to hold the decisions made by DCMS to account. The MPs on the Committee do not have a particularly specialist knowledge of the arts, and will be attempting to understand more about it via this inquiry. They will be particularly keen to hear about the implications of the “Rebalancing Cultural Capital” report, as well as general issues around the way ACE’s funding decisions are working.

Following the collection of written evidence, they will hold two oral evidence sessions at the House of Commons and publish a report of recommendations, which the Government will then respond to.

It’s vital that we submit information into inquiries like this to ensure that the political debate around the way we’re funded is as well-informed as possible. Previous inquiries by the CMS Committee have suffered from a lack of evidence from arts organisations with a positive story to tell about ACE.

Although it seems like a significant undertaking, submitting evidence doesn’t have to be too onerous. There is information on how to submit evidence here (including the suggested word limit of 3,000 words), and the actual submission can be sent online here.

If you have any questions, please contact the Committee Clerks directly on 020 7219 4311 / 020 7219 6188, or get in touch with Rosie Luff, What Next Campaigns and Communications via RLuff@hanovercomms.com