Nottinghamshire arts and culture scene under threat as funding and courses set to be cut

Nottingham City Council has said it can’t recommit to funding the local arts and culture sector despite its financial improvement.

Also, the University of Nottingham has recently announced the removal of some arts courses to its curriculum for the year 2026/27 including music and modern languages.

We spoke to the people of Nottingham to find out how they feel about the planned cuts and how they think it will impact the city.

Lily Howard, 18, from Beeston is a student at Nottingham College says she has been directly affected when looking to apply for courses in the arts sector.

She said: “I was actually going to go to look at the University of Nottingham but I didn’t because I found out they were cutting arts programmes.

“It would have been more convenient for me to attend the University of Nottingham as it’s close to home, where as now I have to go further out of my way and pay more towards travel to commute to a different university.

“As the subject gets strangled in academia funds wise, it becomes harder to access.”

Lily Howard

She added: “As the subject gets strangled in academia funds wise, it becomes harder to access, meaning we will have a lot less people in these spaces when there’s already not enough of us as is.”

Fellow college student Theodore Stevenson, 19, from Derbyshire also has a big passion for the arts and is devastated about the funding cuts.

They said: “People are losing the love for the arts because not everyone has access to them.

“Every theatre has a community, every cinema has regulars, and that being taken away makes people loose interest.”

Passionate about protecting the city’s night time culturual experiences and venues, Richard Horan, 53, from Arnold, thinks the cuts will have a direct impact on the number of people visiting Nottingham.

He said: “If you look around town now, particularly since covid, it’s nowhere near as busy as it used to be.

“I think anything that can bring people into the city such as people going for nights to the theatre or concerts can only be a good thing, particularly for small businesses, which all filters down into the economy of the city.”