Culture Recovery Fund

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), have produced information about the various funding streams available as part of the £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund. As part of the biggest ever one-off investment in UK culture, the #HereForCulture campaign has been launched to help support Britain’s globally renowned arts, culture and heritage industries.

Funding streams available as part of the £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund.

Culture Recovery Fund

Through the £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund, the government has shown it is Here for Culture in all kinds of communities and will make sure our most loved performing arts, heritage sites, independent cinemas, music venues and museums can weather the impact of coronavirus and come back even stronger.

As part of the biggest ever one-off investment in UK culture, the #HereForCulture campaign has been launched to help support Britain’s globally renowned arts, culture and heritage industries.

Organisations across these sectors are encouraged to apply for funding designed to support the cultural sector’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are a number of different strands of the fund, most of which may be accessible by local authorities: 

• Arts Council England – Grants Programme: £500m available with grants of £50k to £3m for organisations which were financially stable before Covid-19 but are now at imminent risk of failure. Applications for round 2 are open and close 4 September 2020 at 4pm. Local authorities are able to apply, considering relevant activities (theatres, museums etc) as stand-alone business units.
• British Film Institute – Independent Cinemas: £30m available in grants for cinemas that are building-based and operation a year round film programme. Mixed arts venues may apply for a grant, but the BFI will only support cinema costs. Funding is split into two strands: safety grants (£2.5k to £10k per site) to support cinemas in making adaptations necessary for re-opening and business sustainability grants (expected to fall between £30k and £200k) to support operation at lower capacity. Organisations can apply for one or both strands. Applications are open until Friday 30 October 2020.
• Arts Council England – Repayable Finance: £270m of finance available, in amounts of £3m+ at 2% per annum, with security to be negotiated, repayable on a fixed basis over up to 20 years with no principal repayable for up to the first 48 months, or on a variable income-based repayment basis using percent of revenue/ticket sales. Local authorities may apply but are expected to have exhausted other avenues for funding. Applications are open until noon on 9 September 2020.
• Historic England – Heritage Stimulus Fund: £50m, of which £34m is available through the Heritage Stimulus Fund offering capital grants of £1m to £10m. Applications must be made by 31 March 2021. Local authorities or groups of local authorities may be eligible to apply if they meet the criteria. The balance has been committed to the Covid-19 Emergency HAR Fund which will allow further applications from the first application round to be funded, and to Repair Grants for Heritage at Risk to be allocated to existing projects.
• Existing Arts Council England capital grant holders who can demonstrate a shortfall caused by Covid-19 may also apply for further funding. Applications will open on 24 August. 

For more information visit the site here

Here for Culture

DCMS are Here for Culture. Take a look at the toolkit

gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-digital-culture-media-sport