***IMPORTANT UPDATE, OCTOBER 2023***

This petition was published on 5 May 2023 and consisted of an Open Letter to LADA’s board members at the time of writing. 

In June 2023, Ria Righteous was appointed Interim Director of LADA and in September 2023, LADA announced an entirely new board, consisting of Robin Deacon (Chair), Gill Lloyd (Treasurer), Angela Bartram, and Aaron Wright. Together with Ria Righteous, this board has worked hard over the last few months to restore LADA to a place of stability. 

On 16 October 2023, LADA announced that it has re-entered Arts Council England’s National Portfolio and will be recruiting for a permanent director in 2024. 

We would like to sincerely thank everyone who showed their support for LADA and for us as staff members this year. We are relieved that LADA’s future has been secured, and we are very happy to have been welcomed back into the organisation in its new, stable state. 

This petition is now closed. Thank you to everyone who signed and shared it.

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***IMPORTANT UPDATE, 6 MAY***

On 6th May, LADA's social media platform was suspended after we published this Open Letter. We have created a new Instagram account: @ladastaffmembers. Please follow/contact us there or at liveartdevelopmentagencystaff@gmail.com. 

Thank you immensely for all of your support so far on this platform as well as on Instagram.

****Please leave a comment in the petition if you want your name to be displayed****

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Dear Board of Trustees of the Live Art Development Agency, 

This letter is in response to the recent developments regarding LADA’s future that culminated in your decision to close the organisation. We are writing to urge you to reconsider this and allow LADA to be helmed by a Board that can ensure the continuation of the organisation.

Attesting to the dysfunction in its governance over the last year, LADA’s status as a National Portfolio Organisation was suspended in April 2023, when Arts Council England – LADA’s primary funding body – deemed it a high-risk organisation. Consequently, the Arts Council proposed a conditional funding offer for the next 6 months, with the prospect of then reviewing LADA and bringing it back into the National Portfolio. On Friday the 28th of April we were informed that you refused the Arts Council’s offer and decided to gradually close down LADA instead, a decision which disregards LADA’s history, its central position in the Live Art sector and in an entire cultural ecosystem, its national and international prominence, the significance of housing the world’s largest collection of research materials on Live Art, and its commitment to supporting radical and marginalised artists and practises for the past 24 years.

Since the beginning of 2022, we have been severely overstretched as a team, and have been asked to operate beyond our capacity on multiple occasions. We were repeatedly denied transparency about a series of topics, including your intentions around LADA’s future and the halting of the Board recruitment process that started in December 2022, even though applications have been received from candidates with great knowledge of the sector. Our recent experience of working at LADA has been one of a profound lack of care from an organisation that presents public statements and programmes around care. This decision to close LADA is emblematic of this lack of care and detrimental in its consequences, and we believe that it cannot be made solely by 3 Board members who have collectively been with the organisation for less than a year. 

We thus ask you to accept the generous support that has been offered from previous Directors, Live Art UK members, and Arts Council itself to help keep LADA afloat. Qualified external figures should steer the recruitment of both new Leadership and Board members immediately and renegotiate with Arts Council with the goal of re-securing NPO status at all costs. Additionally, a more structured plan for long-term and sustainable staffing should be created. If you are unable to make this commitment, we ask that you resign for the future of LADA, as the Board’s priority should be to ensure not only the continuation but the thriving of LADA. With the correct governance, vision, and expertise, LADA can be pulled out of this state of crisis. 

LADA Staff