Policy and Research updates from Arts SU 

•  

  Arts SU's Commuting Report will be going live on our website on Wednesday 1^st May, which compiles our cost of travel research and makes recommendations to UAL to improve student experience. Daniela Commey, our Union Affairs Officer, will be giving a keynote address at the launch, discussing her own experiences of the cost of travel as a commuter student, and why the report’s findings are so important. And a huge shout out to our amazing Graphic Designer, Marina Marbella; you can see her design of the report on 1^st May

   

HE news 

• Ministers will cut funding for performing and creative arts courses at English universities next year, which sector leaders say will further damage the country’s cultural industries. The cuts, outlined by the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, in guidance to the universities regulator, will also reduce funding for Uni-Connect, which runs programmes aimed at widening access to higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to £20m, a third of its 2020-21 budget. You can read more here.

• The Guardian have published an interesting article exploring about how budget cuts and attacks on the arts by the government have created a crisis at Goldsmiths, over seen by Goldsmiths’ Warden, Frances Corner (former Head of LCF). This is a sad and prescient case study with implications for the broader sector, exploring how arts universities are struggling under the current funding arrangement, and staff morale is at an all-time low. There are a lot of aspects of this piece that could be applied to UAL. You can read more here.

• During the pandemic, remote learning was adopted as standard at universities across the UK, but this piece by Rosie Anfilogoff argues that many of the gains from that period are being lost, as the rush to return to “normality” means disabled students are being forced to abandon adjustments universities had made mainstream. You can read more here.

• Research by Universities UK (UUK) has found that despite 73% of ‘first-in-the-family’ graduates stating that university helped them get over their imposter synrome, over 4 in 10 couldn’t have afforded to go at all. This is equivalent to around 1.1 million 24–40-year-olds in England and Wales. This shows that financial assistance (such as bursaries, scholarships and hardship funds) continue to play a decisive role in ensuring students from lower-incomes can access university at all. You can read more here.

   

Arts / Creative Industries news 

• More than two thirds of local authorities have either made, or are planning to make, cuts to the amount they spend on arts and culture in the face of ongoing financial pressures, Arts Professional's latest Pulse survey has found. Initial findings from the survey show that 54% of respondents said their local authority had cut direct funding to arts and culture, with 15.3% saying their council was planning to make cuts. You can read more here.

• A recent report published by King’s College London looks at potential policy solutions to combat precarity in freelance cultural work. The report calls for experimenting with alternative ways of distributing the currently available cultural and arts funding, such as long-term funding models for individual artists, as opposed to the widespread short-term, project-based funding model. It also calls for the creation of a Freelancer Commissioner – an independent public body/role within government representing freelancers. You can read more here.