Dance UK has launched an updated version of the DanceVote website (www.dancevote2010.com) – you can now easily and quickly email your local councillor responsible for arts and culture, as well as your local MP. We’ve changed the message send so that you can tell them you are worried about funding cuts, and most importantly, tell them what impact cuts will have on your life and dance activity in your area.
PLEASE DO GET INVOLVED BY GOING TO www.dancevote2010.com
This campaign will be running over the next fortnight to the Comprehensive Spending Review and beyond, when funding decisions will still be being made by local politicians and Arts Councils. MPs will remain interested in what’s going on in their local constituencies and how cuts are impacting on the lives of local voters, so it is still important to contact them over the coming months.
How DanceVote ties in with other lobbying campaigns to save arts funding:
You may be aware that there are several campaigns running at the moment to appeal to Government to protect arts funding. Dance UK supports these campaigns and is working with the organisers to co-ordinate our messages.
DanceVote is different from the Save The Arts and I Value The Arts lobbying campaigns because it directly connects you, as a local constituent, with your local politicians. It is the personal stories and the local communication that will have the biggest impact on politicians who have to consider the views of their local residents.
•For more information on the ‘I Value the Arts’ campaign, led by the National Campaign for the Arts, go to www.ivaluethearts.co.uk (lots of tools you can use on this site including tags for your facebook page, advocacy toolkit, etc).
•The ‘Save the Arts’ campaign is organised by the London branch of the Turning Point Network, a national consortium of over 2,000 arts organisations and artists dedicated to working together and finding new ways to support the arts in the UK. For more information on Save The Arts go to www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-the-arts.html. They need 100,000 signatures for their petition to secure a debate in parliament about funding cuts.
Many thanks,
