£3m extra for arts in Northern Ireland

From Michael Quinn in The Stage:

Northern Ireland’s arts sector has secured an additional £3 million funding from the region’s legislative Assembly, thanks to a high-profile protest campaign against proposals that would have led to an uplift of just £500,000 for 2008/9.

The announcement comes after a several years of “chronic under-funding” and a proposal in the Assembly’s draft budget that arts council chairman Rosemary Kelly described as “tantamount to sounding a death knell over large areas of arts activity”. The new allocation of £7.55 million for 2008/11 represents a 67% increase on the original sum proposed for the period and includes £1.7 million for the year ahead.