Make headlines! Readers may remember a petition opposing road charging making headlines a few months ago. Now there is an opportunity to do something similar to oppose the planned cuts in Arts Council funding. On the Number 10 Downing Street website there is already a petition up and running which aims to: “Stop the chancellor using Lottery money to plug the funding gap in the 2012 Olympics. If this goes ahead, at least £100 million will go from Big lottery, Sport England, Arts Council, and Heritage Lottery. Much of this money would fund projects within the local voluntary and community sector. Services to disadvantaged people will be directly affected by the loss of this funding, people who will have no opportunity to benefit from the Olympics directly but rely on local services provided by the voluntary sector.” As Dance UK points out, in a plea sent to all members and thereby to all the dance world, this is opposing the reallocation of resources to the Olympics of which the 35 per cent reduction of grants for the arts is a part. Visit this link: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/lotteryolympics/ to submit your name to the petition which has already passed the minimum requirement of 200 signatures to get an official response from Number 10 when the petition closes on September 16, 2007. If it gets to 20,000 signatures it would make it into the top five popular petitions on the site! As we go to press, on April 18, the figure stands at 15,000, a mere 5,000 to go. At that date, the petition in the number 4 slot was “Continue funding for the Royal Air Force Aerobatics Team”. Surely we in the arts world are able to gather a similar if not a much larger number of supporters. Very popular petitions seem to generate responses from the Prime Minister prior to the petition closing, so this really is a great way to draw attention to our widespread concern and opposition to the proposed reduction in Grants for the Arts funding. Please do forward this information to colleagues, friends and collaborators, dancers, teachers, families, and encourage them to add their names to the petition. All of us at Dancing Times have signed and we are confident that many of our readers will do the same. Please start clicking, or ask a kind friend to do so for you if you do not have access to the internet.