Hidden Art in funding plea to prevent closure
Organisation Hidden Art, which promotes the work of designers and designer-makers, says it will be forced to close in January unless it can secure a new source of funding.
Hidden Art chief executive Dieneke Ferguson has written to stakeholders saying that unless an alternate source of funding is identified, the organisation will be forced to shut down on 17 January 2011.
The organisation is seeking to make up the shortfall after the London Development Agency withdrew funding in March 2009. Hidden Art had been funded by the LDA since 2001.
Hidden Art is currently applying for European funding, but needs to match that with funds from another source in order to continue.
Ferguson says, ‘Hidden Art provides the crucial link between passion and product – transforming creative energy into tangible results, benefiting both the economy and the UK design community.’
Hidden Art has supported designers including Ella Doran, Kay & Stemmer and Jethro Macey. It has also collaborated with organisations such as London Metropolitan University to create products such as John Sprange’s Minddice, which is designed to help dementia patients.
Ferguson says, ‘Without the funding we desperately need, Hidden Art will close and it will be the end of all our good work and investment in the UK design sector.’
It would be a real shame if Hidden Art fails, it is a fantastic resource that supports artists and designer-makers in London, through free sessions on aspects of starting up or running a business, through to price breaks on the costs of trade fairs.
In fact, by cutting funding to Hidden Art the LDA is going completely against its basic remit of ‘focus(ing) on economic development, regeneration, business, skills and the creation of opportunities for everyone (in London)’.
This decision takes away grass roots support for new design businesses in London, it cannot be the best of decisions.