Woodbridge Festival of Music and Art urges Suffolk County Council to reconsider proposals to slash arts funding in latest budget

A Suffolk festival is urging a council to reconsider proposals to slash arts funding to balance its budget.

The team behind the Woodbridge Festival of Art and Music said they were alarmed to hear about Suffolk County Council’s plans to axe £500,000 in core arts funding, as part of £64.7m budget cuts.

The event was created to promote creativity in its part of Suffolk and has been held for over a decade.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the festival said: “We are aware of the benefits [the festival] brings our area educationally and socially, and the wider health and wellness benefits.

“Over the 12 years we have existed we've seen art, music and creativity thrive in our community, a rise in diversity in audiences and participants, more visitors and greater local opportunities.

“We would ask Suffolk County Council to reconsider the proposed arts budget cut. And we would also ask the council to go further and use this as an opportunity to consider how Suffolk can promote the economic, social, health, cohesion, creative and cultural benefits of the arts.”

The spokesman said the arts and music bring economic, health and social benefits to the wider community.

Suffolk benefits from over half a million music tourists and music contributes £1.3 billion to the national economy, promotes social cohesion and helps create a resilient and creative work force, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said the Post Office Horizon scandal ‘amply demonstrated the capability of arts and culture to do good in society’.

Journalists, politicians and tireless activists had been campaigning for decades for justice for the wrongly accused post office masters, they noted.

The spokesman added: “But it is creative art, in the form of a televised drama, that is hopefully bringing this awful episode of miscarriage of justice and bullying to an end.

“And it is not the first time the arts have done this - Cathy Come Home, Live Aid and Picasso's Guernica being further examples of art engaging public empathy in ways that raw reporting does not reach.

“In times of strife, art can transform the truly terrible into a social good. This is something society downplays at its peril.

“If we just concentrate on music, it has been calculated by Music Venues Trust that every £10 spent on a music ticket generates £17 in the local economy.

“These are just some of the areas where the arts are being seen as more than an indication of a civilised society, but as a core component to prosperity.”