Welcome to the March issue of Amber's e-newsletter.

In this Issue

	WHAT HAS HAPPENED?
	WHY?
	WHAT YOU CAN DO!
	OUR DETAILED RESPONSE TO THE DECISION
	CONTEXT
	GOVERNANCE
	FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY
	ARTFORM
	ARTS COUNCIL GOALS
	THE DECISION

In Other News

WHAT HAS HAPPENED?

At 7.40am this morning, Side was informed that it will not be included in the Arts Council's National Portfolio Funding strategy and therefore, from 2012 onwards we will no longer receive revenue from our main funding source.

So, what does this actually mean for Side Gallery, Side Cinema, Side Photographic Archive, Amber Film Archive, Amber Online & SideTV and for the thousands of visitors, educational institutions, participants and photographers with whom we engage and work?

To put it bluntly, this cut is a major threat to the entire organisation’s future. Side is a unique asset, not only because of what it has provided for the region and nation for over four decades, through its extensive archive and challenging film & photographic exhibitions, but also internationally via its long-term and significant contribution to post-war British photography via it's commissioning policy.

Although this decision is a major blow to Side, we will now take time to consider other funding options and as our aptly named forthcoming exhibition states: ' A Luta Continua! / The Struggle Continues!’ we will not go down without a fight.

Finally, everyone at Amber Side would like to send their heartfelt condolences to all of the other organisations that have lost their funding too; it is a very sad day for British culture and the arts!

Regards

Kerry Lowes, Peter Scott, Ellin Hare, Graeme Rigby, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Peter Roberts, Annie Robson & Kate Siou (Amber Collective CIC)

WHY?

The Arts Council has axed Side Gallery as a revenue client in its ‘National Portfolio’. The reasons for the decision are:

1. The gallery is part of a collective and therefore doesn’t have a board;

2. The gallery needs Arts Council funding and therefore isn’t sustainable;

3. There are too many galleries dedicated to humanist documentary photography in Side’s geographical location.

This flies in the face of the fact that the collective has continued to deliver what is unquestionably the strongest cultural legacy created in the North East over the past 40 years. Unlike many Arts organisations, its egalitarian collective governance has meant Side Gallery has never approached the Arts Council or Northern Arts for a bail-out. It is the only gallery in the country dedicated to documentary photography.

A detailed response is listed further down the page:

WHAT YOU CAN DO!

If you believe the funding cut to be a bad decision, make a comment or describe what Side means to you personally, please write to us at: side.gallery@amber-online.com 

Remember: This is public money and you have a right to complain if you do not agree with how it is spent!

We will pass on all comments to the Arts Council and any letters of support may prove to be invaluable in securing other funding.

We are currently preparing our strategy and will be in touch shortly to inform you of our plan of action.

However, until then, please feel free support us by attending our exhibition opening event of 'A Luta Continua!' this Saturday (2 April) at 2pm. 

OUR DETAILED RESPONSE TO THE DECISION

CONTEXT

In January 2010, at a meeting with the Arts Council to discuss the underfunding of Side Gallery, it was suggested by the regional director that, comparing its funding with that of other appropriate organisations, the appropriate level of support, then, should be in the vicinity of £174,000.

Side received £62,500 in 2010/11. In the meeting ACE acknowledged the very high levels of output achieved on such funding and the scale of what it achieved when, as with the Culture10 funded Reinventing the City festival, it was enabled to liberate the full resources of the organisation.

In its application for National Portfolio funding it sought to build funding levels to £180,000 by 2014, so that it could make full use of the extraordinary cultural resources it holds.

GOVERNANCE

In its decision to award no National Portfolio funding at all for Side Gallery, it cited an apparently ‘weak governance’, which they explain as ‘Governed by Amber Collective, no Board.

Roles between operations/management/governance blurred, structure questionable with potential to present risks.’ Side Gallery is part of Amber Film & Photography Collective cic. Amber has been an egalitarian collective since 1969. Unlike many arts organisations, since it opened in 1977, Side Gallery has never approached arts funders for a bail-out. It has always taken full responsibility for its commitments.

Throughout its history it has continued to build what is one of the region’s most significant cultural legacies in the past 50 years. Clearly the structure has proved its capacity to deliver reliably.

In an egalitarian collective, ‘operations/management/governance’ are not ‘blurred’ – all members take full moral, legal and artistic responsibility for all the work. This is one of the reasons the structure has been so consistently and efficiently successful.

The way in which it works was outlined in a document supplied as part of Side’s application. The assessment seems to boil down to the fact that, despite 40 years of evidence to the contrary in Amber’s work, the Arts Council quite willfully chooses to believe that arts practitioners cannot take reliable ownership of their own work.

FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY

It cited financial instability. It is true that there is, as there has been for 40 years, uncertainty around the funding Amber’s work. Film funding is up in the air. The group is currently involved in major plans to develop the sustainability and accessibility of the buildings and its internationally significant film and photography archive, which do present risks.

There has never been a time when Amber has not faced such uncertainty. Only a month or so ago, Arts Council directors were joking about Side Gallery’s ability to survive difficult times. Whilst acknowledging Amber/Side’s record of income generation, the latest Arts Council annual review points out that it’s underfunding undermines the organisation’s development capacity.

Centrally, the argument appears to be that sustainability is reliant on Arts Council of England Funding, so we won’t give them any.

ARTFORM

In addition to the Arts Council’s unsustainable assessments around Governance and Finance, they make the bizarre argument that there were ‘too many strong/good applications for work in this artform and this geographic location’. Elsewhere, the assessment acknowledges that Side is ‘the only dedicated documentary photography space in the north east.’ There is in fact no other gallery in the country dedicated to the crucial narratives of humanist documentary. This uniqueness and cultural importance in Side Gallery’s work was amply made in a powerful and moving set of testimonies from internationally renowned photographers, which was attached to the National Portfolio application. Audience perception of this uniqueness, importance and value of Side Gallery’s work can always be witnessed in the copious entries in the exhibition comments books. A representative selection was attached to the application.

ARTS COUNCIL GOALS

The Arts Council assessment claims that there was no evidence to support Side Gallery’s address to its ‘Goals 3 - 5’

Goal 3 – the arts are ‘sustainable, resilient and innovative’. The application included clear discussion of the current innovations and cultural importance of documentary narrative as the languages of photography and video become genuinely vernacular in rapid development of digital production and distribution technologies. The work shown in Side Gallery has been constantly innovative, as photographers have responded to this context and with monthly audiences of 13-14,000 unique visitors to the exhibitions and films/videos in its webwork, the group has a stronger record of online innovation than most. It clearly referred to an unparalleled record of sustainability and resilience (which Arts Council directors demonstrably acknowledged elsewhere). It addressed the incorporated goal of ‘promoting greater collaboration between organisations to increase efficiency and innovation,’ talking of the way in which Amber/Side had developed the collaborations (funded by NewcastleGateshead Initiative’s Culture10 programme) that delivered the hugely innovative and successful Reinventing the City festival in 2009 – and how building that kind of funding level into the revenue grant would enable specific and ambitious projects over the three years of National Portfolio funding. The Arts Council wanted to see organisations ‘diversify their funding streams’ and the application talked of the way in which its on-going development plan delivers increasing income streams as the Amber archive is digitised.

Goal 4 – a ‘diverse and highly skilled’ arts leadership and workforce . An egalitarian collective obviously takes issue with the separation of leadership and workforce, but the track record shows that cultural work at its highest level can be delivered the Amber way. The application addressed the incorporated goal of ‘sharing knowledge and skills’, outlining a) the unique skills and knowledge base that Side Gallery holds and b) the plans for sharing those skills, that knowledge base along with the richness of the resources of the archive. There is a serious lack of understanding of humanist documentary across the broad sweep of visual arts galleries in the country – despite the importance that audiences attach to the work when they get the opportunity to see it. The whole application was concerned with addressing this lack of diversity and skill in ‘the arts leadership’. The incorporated goal of ‘creating equal opportunities to enter the arts workforce’ was addressed in discussion of how Amber/Side is working with a new generation of cultural activists, gathering around the operation. The degree of equality offered in any creative collaboration was explained in attached documents – the principles of egalitarianism run deep and is rooted in what the assessment acknowledges is ‘a long history of working with culturally diverse communities.’

Goal 5 – ‘Every child and young person has the opportunity to experience the richness of the arts.’ Side Gallery doesn’t do a lot of children’s work at the moment. It is not resourced to do so and its exhibitions usually challenge adult understandings of the world. It does, however, have a significant and constantly increasing audience amongst young people in the 16 – 25 age range. The Arts Council knows this and the fact was articulated in the application. The application also made clear that this was one of the key areas that would be developed further over the three years with the requested increase in resources.

THE DECISION

This decision is mystifying. It seems not to have taken account of the Arts Council’s acknowledged understandings or of what was written in the application and the supporting documents. It seems to be rooted in a deeply prejudiced antipathy to the principle of collective organisation that flies in the face of an unparalleled record of achievement. It is a profoundly stupid, culturally illiterate and illogical decision.