Chris Hodgkins is a jazz musician, band leader and arts advocate with a decades-long track record of supporting the UK music sector at both the community and national levels. Having co-founded the Welsh Jazz Festival and Welsh Jazz Society, and directed the nationally funded Jazz Services Ltd, his career bridges local cultural engagement and national policy creation, including the establishment of the Parliamentary Jazz Awards and as Secretary to the All Party Parliamentary Jazz Group. His extensive experience gives him unique insight into how funding frameworks can best serve grassroots arts and music and cultural heritage.
1 Introduction
In the interest of transparency and ensuring that the crucial issues facing jazz and grassroots music in England are effectively tackled, this response addresses key consultation points on arts lottery funding rather than using the standard online questionnaire.
1.1 This paper covers three important areas of lottery funding of the arts in England.
- National Lottery Project Grants
- Additionality
- Supporting Grassroots Live Music Fund (SGLM)
1.2 Summary
This submission sets out a comprehensive critique of how National Lottery funding operates within Arts Council England (ACE), focusing on three interconnected areas: National Lottery Project Grants, additionality, and the Supporting Grassroots Live Music Fund (SGLM). Drawing on FOI disclosures, ACE data, sector research, and first hand knowledg, it demonstrates that England’s current Lottery‑funded arts system is structurally imbalanced and systematically disadvantages jazz, grassroots music, freelancers, and small organisations.
The document shows that the absence of artform policies since 2010 has resulted in generic, opaque assessment processes that favour established institutions. Jazz success rates in Grants for the Arts averaged 4.4%, fell to 1.2% under NLPG, and dropped to 2% in SGLM — evidence of a system unable to assess jazz and grassroots musics fairly. Grantium’s complexity, inaccessible language, and the exclusion of jazz organisations from venue‑ownership‑based funds further depress access.
The analysis of National Lottery Project Grants reveals a stark structural imbalance: between 2018–2023, NPOs secured awards at an average rate of 74.4%, compared with 42.7% for non‑NPO applicants. In jazz, NPO success rates averaged 82.5%, while non‑NPO jazz applicants fell below 1–2% of all eligible applications. This occurred despite NPOs already receiving substantial Grant‑in‑Aid revenue and a 5% uplift to core funding. Although new rules introduced in 2023 restrict NPO eligibility, they do not resolve the underlying imbalance.
The section on additionality shows that ACE has increasingly used Lottery funds to supplement NPO revenue funding — a breach of the principle that Lottery money must not replace Government spending. Since 2015, the number of NPOs has risen by 49%, and Lottery allocations to NPOs have reached hundreds of millions, including £35.76m for English National Opera. This diversion reduces the funds available to freelancers and small organisations, driving down NLPG success rates from ~50% to ~38%.
The analysis of Supporting Grassroots Live Music shows that while SGLM delivered transformative benefits, ACE’s response avoided acknowledging structural barriers. The new SGM fund, funded by DCMS rather than ACE, broadens eligibility and removes the ring fence that protected grassroots venues — diluting support and re‑exposing small venues to competition from larger organisations. Sector research shows the scale of the crisis: 11,000 venues lost since 2019, 1.5 million young people abandoning ambitions to perform, and the emergence of “live music deserts” where access to live music is becoming geographically unequal.
Across all sections, the evidence reveals a cultural system where institutional advantage is reinforced, grassroots infrastructure is collapsing, and Lottery funding is increasingly used to stabilise ACE’s portfolio rather than expand opportunity.
1.3 Conclusion
The document demonstrates that England’s Lottery‑funded arts system is no longer functioning as intended. National Lottery Project Grants have drifted from their purpose as an open‑access fund for freelancers, small organisations and experimental work. Additionality has been eroded, with Lottery money routinely used to support NPO core programmes. Grassroots venues and independent musicians face structural barriers, collapsing infrastructure, and declining access to funding.
ACE’s recent reforms — including restricted NPO eligibility — are welcome but insufficient. They do not address the deeper architectural problem: a centralised system that privileges institutions, lacks art form policy, and treats grassroots music as a temporary funding priority rather than essential cultural infrastructure.
The evidence points to one conclusion: only structural reform can restore fairness, rebuild the talent pipeline, and ensure Lottery funding delivers genuine public value. The New Deal’s dual‑pillar system, dedicated grassroots body, restored additionality, art form‑specific policy, and Recording Support Scheme will provide the coherent national framework required to reverse decline and deliver cultural democracy.
You can read the submission here
