Will Lottery Funding For 2012 Olympics Hit Your Arts Project?

16th May 2007

Lottery Funding - Is the Olympic Bid going to reduce your arts funding? How was your Arts Grant this year?

You might remember a petition opposing road charging making headlines a few months ago - we have an opportunity to do something similar to oppose the planned cuts to Arts Council funding. On the Number 10 Downing Street website there is already a petition up and running which aims to: "Stop the chancellor using Lottery money to plug the funding gap in the 2012 Olympics."

This is opposing the reallocation of resources to the Olympics of which the35% reduction of grants for the arts is a part. To submit your name to this petition go here:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/lotteryolympics/

It has already passed the minimum requirement of 200 signatures to get an official response from Number 10 when the petition closes on 16 September 2007. If it gets to 40,000 signatures it would make it into the top 5 most popular petitions on the site! Currently, the petition in the number 4 spot is 'Continue funding for the Royal Air Force Aerobatics Team'. Surely in the arts world we are able to gather a similar if, not larger number, of supporters.

Very popular petitions seem to generate responses from the Prime Minister prior to the petition closing, so this really is a way to draw the attention to widespread concern and opposition to the proposed 35% reduction in Grants for the Arts funding.