External Funding

Culture Recovery Fund: Grants

https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding 

Who can apply: Cultural organisations based in England that are properly constituted and were registered at Companies House and/or Charity Commission no later than 28 February 2017. Local Authorities, Universities and other Public Sector bodies who run or maintain cultural services can also apply. 

What you can apply for: This funding is to ensure that, by 31 March 2021, successful applicants are either fully or partially reopened, or operating on a sustainable, cost efficient basis, so that they are able to reopen at a later date. 

The aim of the Culture Recovery Fund is to help maintain England’s cultural ecology by supporting culturally significant organisations which were financially sustainable before Covid-19 but are now at imminent risk of failure and have exhausted all other options for increasing their resilience.  The central aims of the fund are to enable cultural organisations to:

• Reopen/restart their operations, where appropriate or
• Operate on a sustainable, cost-efficient basis, so that they are able to reopen at a later date if, for example, reopening under social distancing is not permissible or does not represent a value for money approach.

Organisations should only propose to deliver activities that are good value for money with social distancing in place, and that do not entail significant financial risk.

The application: The application will be via Grantium.  You will need to answer a set of questions and provide mandatory attachments as evidence. 

Questions in the application:

• Tell us how Covid-19 has impacted your financial viability, resilience and sustainability?
• Tell us your plan for how a grant from this fund will enable you to achieve financial viability by 31 March 2021 in the way that is appropriate for your organisation.
• Tell us about your organisation’s work and how it is considered to be culturally significant and/or how it contributes to providing cultural opportunity in England.
• Using the protected characteristics outlined under the Equality Act please tell us how you will improve the diversity of your workforce, governance, audiences, visitors and participants.
• You will also be asked to provide income and expenditure for the grant, alongside cashflow, management accounts, forecast and balance sheet, audited financial statements for one year and if applying for over £1m an activity plan and 3-years worth of financial statements will also be required.  

Key dates:

Round One: opens 10 August, closes 21 August 2020

Round Two: opens 21 August, closes 4 September 2020
 

Grant size: between £50,000 and £3m (repayable finance to be available for those needing over £3m)