The ongoing growth of Portsmouth’s culture sector has been hailed as a huge success for the city in the face of reducing budgets.
Portsmouth City Council Leader Cllr Steve Pitt has highlighted the partnership working that has enabled continued investment in culture services, which are so important to residents, while government funding has decreased.
Cllr Pitt said: “Portsmouth’s culture sector has a collaborative mindset and we’re really proud of the great partnership work that happens across our city so that Portsmouth bucks the trend of cuts and closures. The way we’ve worked with organisations has meant we’ve contributed money enabling them to bid and receive further funding to put on events and festivals that our residents really enjoy.
“Some government figures have suggested our budget for cultural services went up 4% since 2010/11, but that’s really misleading. It doesn’t account for inflation, estimated at 51.5% during that time, so what we have seen in reality is a big real terms cut.”
Since 2015/16, reductions in government funding have meant the council has had to make significant overall savings, 5% of which has been made to culture, leisure and sport services. Despite this it has still maintained its nine libraries, its six museums and green spaces while other areas of the country have seen services close.
The council worked with partners to fill the financial hole by providing funding that can be used to generate further investment in the city’s cultural initiatives. A prime example of this the council awarding £30,000 from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund to Portsmouth Creates which in turn enabled it to support several creative organisations to secure more than £370,000 funding into the city’s creative economy, and create over 80 new jobs in the sector.
Additionally, the council has successfully bid for funding to pursue its own projects such as libraries which have recently secured nearly £200,000 funding from Arts Council England to deliver a range of schemes including volunteering initiatives and buying tuk-tuks (picture shows the Leader in one of the library tuk-tuks) to expand the reach of libraries in the community.