20 September, 2010

If you are interested in the arts in the UK then you might be interested in signing this petition to the Government to try and prevent radical cuts to current levels of arts funding, which will decimate what has been one of the UK’s chief success stories over the past 20 years. The Prime Minister has pledged to take seriously any issue backed by a petition with 100,000 signatures. The DCMS met about the future of arts funding on Tuesday 14th September and will be making tough decisions in the next week weeks. So time is short. The petition is part of a national campaign that is organised by a consortium of London galleries, arts organisations, and artists.

Over a hundred leading artists including David Hockney, Anthony Caro, Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Anish Kapoor, Richard Hamilton, Antony Gormley and Tracey Emin have joined the campaign to fight against the proposed 25% cuts in government funding of the arts. The campaign was launched on Friday 10 September 2010, with the release of a new video animation by artist David Shrigley highlighting the effect of the funding cuts. Each week the work of a different artist, created in response to the campaign, will be released. Jeremy Deller and Mark Wallinger will follow David Shrigley.