Culture Recovery Fund: Emergency Resource Support – Round 2 Opens for England’s Cultural Organisations

Further grants are available for England’s cultural organisations, across all sectors, that were previously solvent but now find themselves financially at-risk because of the impacts of coronavirus restrictions.

The Culture Recovery Fund: Emergency Resource Support programme has been established to provide emergency funding for culturally significant organisations in England. Those which were financially sustainable before coronavirus (COVID-19) but are now at imminent risk of failure, having exhausted all other options for increasing their resilience, are being supported.

Through the programme, Arts Council England will offer funding to meet shortfalls between applicants’ operating costs and income up to a point where they can demonstrate a return to financial viability, but no later than 31 March 2022.

From an overall budget of £23 million, grants of between £25,000 and £3 million are available. (For profit-making commercial organisations, the maximum is £1 million.)

The grants can support a range of measures, including staff salaries and fixed/operational costs, projects that are essential to continued operations, COVID-related debt, one-off costs arising from organisational development, and one-off building/capital expenditure.

Applications are open to cultural organisations in England that are properly constituted with a governing document. They must be able to demonstrate, via cashflow forecast, they are at risk of ceasing to trade viably within 12 weeks of the point of application. The kinds of organisations that are eligible to apply include:

  • Private companies (either limited by shares or guarantee) registered at Companies House.
  • Community interest companies (CICs) (either limited by shares or guarantee) registered with the CIC regulator.
  • Charitable incorporated organisations (CIOs) registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales.
  • Charitable companies or charitable trusts registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales.
  • Limited liability partnerships registered at Companies House.
  • Partnerships established under a partnership deed/ agreement governed by the Partnership Act 1890 or the Limited Partnerships Act 1907.
  • Community benefit and co-operative societies registered with the Financial Conduct Authority.
  • Royal Charter bodies.
  • Statutory bodies and other public bodies including universities and museums that run or maintain cultural services.

For this programme, the Arts Council defines ‘cultural’ as sitting within the remit of Arts Council England. Its supported artforms or disciplines are music, theatre, dance, combined arts, visual arts, museums, or literature. Comedy venues are also eligible for this fund.

Applicants must first complete a ‘Permission to Apply’ form by 11 January 2022. Where permission is granted, applicants will be invited to make a full application within five working days. The application portal will open for full applications on 29 November 2021 and close on 28 January 2022.

(This report was the subject of a GRANTfinder Newsflash.)