We’re pleased to share the Equity Arts Funding Tracker, developed in collaboration with Equity union, to analyse how Arts Council funding has changed across the UK’s parliamentary constituencies from 2010 to 2023. This tool provides insights for stakeholders looking to understand and advocate for equitable arts funding.
See the coverage on The Guardian.
Methodology
We processed data from Arts Council England, Arts Council of Wales, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Scottish Arts Council, each with its own time span and geographical boundaries. We then proceeded to harmonise these datasets to produce aggregated arts funding time-series for each UK Westminster constituency (2024 boundaries).
The Scottish dataset, based on postcodes, allowed us to map geographical coordinates to the constituency boundaries, covering 2011 to 2023. The English dataset, which ranged from 2014/15 to 2022/23 and included data beyond England, was updated from 2015 constituencies to 2024 boundaries using geographical weighting.
For Northern Ireland, we handled data spanning from 2010 to 2023 using 2010 boundaries, also updating it to 2024 boundaries through geographical weighting. The Welsh dataset was already aligned with the 2024 parliamentary constituencies and covered the period from 2010 to 2023.
After harmonizing the geographical data, we integrated the datasets, accounting for cross-country constituency values and labeling non-specific extra-regional allocations as ‘Outside Scotland’ and ‘Outside Wales’. This resulted in a comprehensive dataset spanning from 2010 to 2023, with varying start and end years for each country.
To make the funding values comparable across different years, we converted them in real terms to 2023 price levels using the Office for National Statistics Consumer Price Index (ONS CPI). The user has the option of viewing both the nominal or the adjusted real term figures.
We then two measures for the change in arts council funding for each constituency. The absolute measure gives the difference in funding between two given years, while the trend-line measure, based on linear regression, considers the change in funding over time, reducing the impact of multi-year fluctuations.
All data processing, including cleaning, harmonization, integration, and analysis, was done in Python, ensuring robust handling and accurate computations. We developed the dashboard using Svelte and Apache ECharts.