Resilience and renewal… What a year it has been. Covid-19 has had an unprecedented impact on our economy, our culture and our way of life. Overnight, this global pandemic led to the suspension of all public activities and a collapse in the living and working environment for everybody. Organisations, unable to generate ticketed and earned income, faced an immediate fight for survival as they tried to find new ways of sustaining their businesses in the face of the threat of insolvency. Individual artists reported the wholesale cancellation of work and many left the arts altogether in search of employment elsewhere. A tragedy in every sense.
Chief Executive, Nick Capaldi, reflects on an extraordinary year for society and the arts.
The Arts Council responded quickly, working with the Welsh Government to distribute emergency funding. And organisations responded to the Covid restrictions by moving work online where they could, and furloughing staff where they couldn’t. The extent and level of our grant-giving far exceeded anything seen in previous years. In all, we distributed £23.9m of urgent and emergency support to over 750 individuals and organisations – a notable achievement given that Arts Council staff were working from home at this time. In spite of the unprecedented disruption, artists and arts organisations presented inspiring and engaging work under these most difficult of circumstances. Organisations also responded positively to the wider public health need, distributing food, volunteering staff to Test and Trace, making their facilities available for public health screening. The arts demonstrated – once again – their resilience, imagination and their place at the heart of communities. Now, as we look cautiously towards the easing of Covid restrictions, the world looks very different to how it did before the pandemic. So, as we consider “what next?”, we’re not talking about “business as usual” – instead,
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