Paper short abstract:

Since 2010, austerity-led cuts to the Arts Council budget in Northern Ireland have devastated the region's arts scene. This paper examines the local art world's responses, focusing on the language used to argue for the value of increased funding and on the protest strategies employed.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2010, cuts to the Arts Council budget in Northern Ireland have devastated the region's arts scene, so much that public funding for the arts in Northern Ireland is projected to soon be only half that of the 2010/11 fiscal year. The series of Culture Ministers who have overseen these cuts have consistently positioned them as products of Westminster-led austerity. Concern and frustration at these choices have motivated Northern Ireland's art world to respond with a series of protests. Studying these protests can grant important insight into localized responses to austerity in small economies and in regions that are relatively marginal within the global art scene.

This paper interrogates the protest strategies employed by Northern Ireland's artists over the past five years, examining the various conceptions of 'crisis', 'creativity', and even 'austerity' itself that have been mobilized in an effort to draw attention to the art world's plight and bring an end to the yearly whittling away of the public arts budget. It is particularly interested in the value language at play in the discourses of artists and protesters, civil servants and government officials, and the general public. Examining these value arguments - which variously position arts and creativity as public good, human rights, instruments of policy, inherently beautiful, elitist, and so forth - can provide deeper understanding of the ways in which the meaning of art and creativity shifts and changes during times of austerity.