'How to Get to Heaven from Belfast' star to join fellow creatives at Communities Minister 'no confidence' protest at Stormont
Star of ‘The Dry’ and ‘How to Get to Heaven from Belfast’, Roisin Gallagher, is one of a range of creatives set descend on Stormont to issue a message of ‘no confidence’ in Communities Minister Gordon Lyons.
Actors, dancers, musicians, theatre directors, stage managers, cabaret performers, visual artists and more will be at Stormont on Tuesday, September 8, to demand an end to arts funding cuts and the delivery of a long-promised arts policy.
The Northern Ireland creatives with their local MLAs and sit in the public gallery for Ministerial Questions, where Gordon Lyons is expected to be asked about the arts funding crisis.
The protest is organised by performing arts and entertainment trade union Equity.
Alice Adams Lemon, Equity Official for Northern Ireland, said: “Artists across Northern Ireland are losing their jobs and communities are being badly impacted. Gordon Lyons keeps promising an arts policy, but while arts and culture suffer he still fails to deliver.
“Equity is sending a strong message of No Confidence in Gordon Lyons as Minister responsible for the arts. His abject failure to address the crisis in funding and set out a policy for the arts is a dereliction of his duty. He has failed and the Assembly is continuing to fail artists and our communities.
“We say Save the Arts, end the funding crisis, and bring forward a policy for the arts now.”
At just £5.07 per head in 2023/24, Northern Ireland Arts Council (ACNI) receives the lowest per capita arts council funding anywhere in the UK - less than half that of the second-lowest, Wales.