Applications for grants worth a total of £300m will soon open for the UK’s cultural, heritage and creative sectors in the third and final round of the £2bn recovery fund.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) today (Friday) outlined the categories of organisations that will be considered for the last round of the Culture Recovery Fund (CRF).
The upcoming round of funding has been earmarked to provide further support as the cultural, heritage and creative sectors move towards reopening at full capacity.
Almost £220m will be available for both new organisations who are at “imminent risk of failure” and existing recipients of CRF grants. Funding will be available to boost those who have received support already whilst ensuring “more culturally significant organisations do not fail” as a result of the pandemic.
“The aim of the funding is to help organisations prepare to reopen and for a return to full capacity, while building a sustainable financial future by providing much needed financial support to protect organisations through to the end of the year,” DCMS said in a statement.
The CRF has already provided £1.2bn to more than 5,000 organisations and sites in England, with further support going to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as to the UK’s national museums and galleries.
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said: “Our record breaking Culture Recovery Fund has already helped thousands of organisations across the country to survive and protected hundreds of thousands of jobs. Now, as we look forward to full reopening, this funding shows our commitment to stand behind culture and heritage all the way through the pandemic.
“This round of funding will provide a further boost to help organisations build back better and ensure we can support more of those in need – safeguarding our precious culture and heritage, and the jobs this supports.”
Today’s funding announcement also includes a number of other investments to help protect the culture and heritage sectors.
The Heritage Stimulus Fund will be boosted by £35m, bringing the total fund to over £80m. This funding has already enabled repair and maintenance works at more than 800 of the country’s treasured heritage assets and has protected the jobs of expert craftspeople working in the sector.
The news comes a day after live music and theatre organisations launched legal action against the UK government to force it to publicly release the Events Research Programme (ERP) data amid ongoing opposition in the industry to the continuation of restrictions.
Image: The Lowry / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 / Edited for size
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