Petition Tag - arts council

The Arts Council has axed Side Gallery as a revenue client in its ‘National Portfolio’. The reasons for the decision are:

1. The gallery is part of a collective and therefore doesn’t have a board;

2. The gallery needs Arts Council funding and therefore isn’t sustainable;

3. There are too many galleries dedicated to humanist documentary photography in Side’s geographical location.

This flies in the face of the fact that the collective has continued to deliver what is unquestionably the strongest cultural legacy created in the North East over the past 40 years.

Unlike many Arts organisations, its egalitarian collective governance has meant Side Gallery has never approached the Arts Council or Northern Arts for a bail-out. It is the only gallery in the country dedicated to documentary photography.

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