Covid 19 - Arts Council | Culture Recovery Fund: Grants Second Round

From midday on 12^th July 2021 applications for a grants of between £25,000 to £3,000,000 can be made to the Culture Recovery Fund being administered by the Arts Fund.

This fund has been put in place to “provide emergency funding awards to 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.

Applicants can apply for funding to cover the period up to a point where they can demonstrate a return to financial viability, but no later than 31 December 2021, and must be able to demonstrate they are at risk of failure or ceasing to trade viably within 12 weeks of the point of application.”

The fund of £250,000,000 is being administered by the Arts Council on behalf of the DCMS and is the second such fund.  The criteria for the Culture Recovery Fund were designed by DCMS, with the Arts Council administering, awarding and monitoring it on their behalf. The closing date for applications is midday on 30^th September 2021.  This programme is part of the Government’s £1.57 billion package intended to protect the UK’s culture and heritage sectors from the economic impacts of Covid-19.

Here is a link to the information on how to apply, including eligibility criteria and a range of other FAQs.

Amongst the FAQs is the following interesting point on the issue of Eligibility:

“Question | We’ve applied to another Arts Council funding programme (like Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants) and are yet to hear a decision- does that mean we are ineligible to apply?

Answer | No, you can technically apply to both programmes as long as there is absolutely no duplication across the two applications. They must be for wholly separate purposes. You should, however, consider contingency plans should either or both applications be unsuccessful.”