£130m arts funding exposes systemic inequality in cultural infrastructure: Who benefits from England’s £1.5bn ‘Arts Everywhere’ scheme?

Indigenous cultural funding models center land, language, and collective ownership, contrasting sharply with England’s state-centric, institution-driven approach. The £1.5bn scheme’s focus on bricks-and-mortar venues ignores the ephemeral, oral, and digital traditions that sustain Indigenous cultural practices. Funding is often tied to reconciliation or restitution in post-colonial contexts, whereas England’s scheme lacks mechanisms for addressing historical dispossession of working-class and racialized communities.

The scheme’s £1.5bn allocation follows decades of neoliberal cultural policy, where funding has shifted from local authority support to competitive, market-driven grants. Post-2010 austerity saw a 30% cut to local authority arts budgets, disproportionately affecting venues in deprived areas, yet this context is absent from the narrative. Historical parallels include the 19th-century ‘cultural mission’ of museums and libraries, which were tools of social control and class stratification, echoing today’s elite-led cultural infrastructure.

Cross-culturally, arts funding often prioritizes community cohesion and identity preservation over economic metrics, as seen in Nordic ‘culture schools’ or Brazil’s ‘Pontos de Cultura’ program. In India, state funding for the arts is decentralized to regional languages and folk traditions, unlike England’s top-down, London-centric model. The ‘Arts Everywhere’ scheme’s emphasis on physical venues overlooks the role of festivals, markets, and digital platforms in non-Western cultural ecosystems.

Research from the Arts Council England’s own reports shows that arts funding has the highest social return on investment in deprived areas, yet this evidence is ignored in favor of economic growth narratives. Studies on cultural democracy (e.g., Belfiore & Bennett, 2007) demonstrate that participatory arts reduce social isolation and improve mental health, outcomes not prioritized in the scheme. The lack of disaggregated data on funding allocation by ethnicity, disability, or region further obscures structural biases.

Artistic and spiritual traditions often view culture as a sacred or communal act, not a commodity to be funded via competitive grants. The scheme’s focus on ‘infrastructure’ reduces art to a transactional service, ignoring its role in collective healing and identity formation. In many African and Indigenous traditions, art is inseparable from ritual and governance, a dimension entirely absent from the ‘Arts Everywhere’ framework.

The scheme risks entrenching a two-tier cultural economy, where elite institutions thrive while grassroots spaces collapse, mirroring the ‘cultural deserts’ emerging in post-industrial towns. Future scenarios could include a shift toward decentralized, community-owned cultural hubs, as seen in Barcelona’s ‘superblocks’ model applied to arts spaces. Without structural reform, the £1.5bn will likely exacerbate regional inequality, with London and the South East capturing 60% of funds.

The scheme’s funding criteria favor institutions with existing capital, excluding Black, Asian, disabled, and working-class-led venues that lack access to match funding or private sponsorship. Grassroots organizations like the Black Cultural Archives or Deaf-led theatres receive minimal support, despite their critical role in preserving marginalized histories. The lack of consultation with these communities in the scheme’s design reflects a top-down, extractive approach to cultural policy.