Arts Council England, Historic England, National Lottery Heritage Fund and British Film Institute are among the arts organisations tasked with assessing applications for the £880m worth of performing arts grant ring-fenced in the government’s £1.6bn coronavirus arts rescue package.
The rescue scheme will begin assessing coronavirus arts grant applications this month, and this page will be updated as information feeds through.
The £1.6bn arts rescue package, secured by culture secretary Oliver Dowden after weeks of studying the problems facing the arts sector, includes £880m of grants for the financial year to April 2021.
>See also: How to get the government’s £10,000 cash grant for small businesses
The £880m worth of grant money will be shared between theatres, music venues, heritage sites, museums, galleries and independent loans, will be supplemented by £270m worth of repayable loans.
In addition to the £880m worth of grants and £270m of repayable loans, other measures announced today for struggling arts organisations were:
- £100m of targeted support for the national cultural institutions in England and the English Heritage Trust
- £120m of capital investment to restart construction on cultural infrastructure and for heritage construction projects in England that were paused due to the coronavirus pandemic
- An extra £188m of arts regeneration funding for the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland (£33m), Scotland (£97m) and Wales (£59m)
More than 350,000 people have been furloughed in the leisure and recreation industries since the pandemic began, and around 700,000 people are employed in the sector overall. Many of them are young people, whom the chancellor fears are most at risk from the looming jobs crisis. To that end, Mr Sunak will separately announced cash grants of £1,000 for small businesses which take on youth trainees aged 16-24 in a bid to shelter them from the unemployment tsunami.
Mr Sunak cited Britain’s world-renowned galleries, music venues and independent cinemas as critical to keeping the economy thriving and “that’s why we’re giving them the vital cash they need to safeguard their survival, helping to protect jobs”.
Further reading
Find your small business coronavirus grant – list of UK councils
