Arts Organisations Filling The Gaps For Cash-Strapped Youth Services

Youth services hit by funding cuts are increasingly looking towards arts organisations to fill the gaps.

Most of the country's local authorities have made cuts to their youth provisions during the past six years, according to a report by Unison.

This has resulted in the closure of 244 youth centres and the loss of nearly 100,000 youth service places since 2014.

Vijay Mistry runs 2Funky Arts in Leicester, which has arts workshops, youth and community projects, performances, comedy events and dance shows.

He said: "A lot of arts organisations are delivering projects like summer schools and projects in the evenings and weekends... they're trying to fill a gap.

"We've noticed over the years that quite a lot of organisations have had to close.

"They just can't rely on funding anymore... some of the clever organisations have had to diversify and had to look at other revenue streams and that's what we've done as well."

Epic CIC in West London has risen to the challenge posed by the cuts, running the organisation more like a business so it can continue to support thousands of young people, many from difficult backgrounds.

Brendan O'Keefe is the managing director and says their way is the future.

"We were part of Kensington and Chelsea (Borough Council) until two years ago and we worked with them to develop this new model.

"It's an employee-led mutual so basically we run the same youth services but it's got a much more commercial underpinning.

"We are really keen to develop new sources of income and run the services as a business so now we do things like we trade directly with schools and charge them for services.

"We bring in money from health sources as well and we also trade with the public."