City’s cultural cash funding announced for 2012: who got what?

This year’s ACIP has been announced. What’s that? Basically, it’s a load of money the council give out to the city’s arts and cultural organisations. It’s designed to boost the city’s cultural offer, get people visiting and engaging (both from and outside of the city), and boost the local economy. Which we all want, right?

It seems to be helping things along: they’ve pumped in £8.3 million over two years, supporting over 120 organisations: that’s 12,400 events attended by 4.2 million people. Hotel stays are up, and we’re in a bit of a boom time for tourism here. So it makes sense to help the things that actually bring people here and keep people in jobs, too.

This year there was a £3,670,015 pot of cash to go around. Arts organisations had to apply for funding, and today the results have been announced. So, who got what?

The big hitters - FACT (£144,932), Biennial (£267,144), Everyman and Playhouse (£739,298) and the Bluecoat (£245,202) all get a significant chunk of the kitty, with the Philharmonic getting the most: a whopping £1,242,083.

Smaller local arts organisations are also represented: the ace Mercy get £5,000, and Nerve Centre, Metal, Fuse New Theatre, Lodestar Theatre and Movema all get between £5k - £10k. Hooray.

Homotopia and DaDaFest each get a nice amount this year: Homotopia takes away £37,000 and DaDaFest £58,000. Both were recently awarded some Arts Council cash too, so that’ll all come in handy when sorting out this year’s festivals, held in the latter half of the year. Liverpool Pride, currently fundraising for this year’s event in August, receives a much-needed £10k.

There are some nice surprises in there, too: Africa Oye gets £25k, the Black-E £60k (we’d love to see this place used for more things in future), and the utterly compelling Hallowe’en Carnival, held at the end of every October (no really), receives £25k.

There are other wins too: The Picket, Liverpool Comedy Festival, Brouhaha, Royal Court, Tate Liverpool, Arabic Arts Festival, Irish Festival and Open Eye Gallery also get brown envelopes stuffed with much-needed moolah hand delivered by Joe Anderson (probably). The wonderful Unity Theatre also get a nice wedge: £107,407.

Open Culture who sort the excellent Light Night get £10,000, as do Pagoda Arts who do work within the Chinese cultural community. Happily, after a bit of a rough and stormy year, Static Gallery has been given £14,000. We’ll drink to that (but you’re paying for the tab, Philharmonic).