Delivering the Government's Culture Recovery Fund

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On 5 July 2020, the Government announced its plans to make an unprecedented investment of £1.57 billion into our sector, in order to protect and support cultural organisations around the country as they grapple with the impact of the Covid-19 crisis.

This investment represented a vote of confidence from the Government in the strength, vibrancy and resilience of our sector, and stood as both a recognition of the central role that creativity and culture have played in our country’s history, and the essential contribution that creativity and culture will make to our country’s future.

The scale of the current crisis means, inevitably, that this package, generous as it is, won’t be able to help everyone – but it offers the organisations that underpin the cultural and heritage sector a crucial chance to regroup and rebuild. I remain profoundly grateful to our Secretary of State, Oliver Dowden, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, and the DCMS and HM Treasury officials who have enabled this to happen. Without this investment, it is no exaggeration to say that our cultural landscape was facing obliteration.

On Wednesday 29 July, the Government set out the detail of its Culture Recovery Fund: how it will be administered, who will be eligible to apply, and where its resources will be focused. You can read the full DCMS announcement here, but the Government’s fundamental criteria are clear. This fund is designed to do the urgent and critical work of supporting the survival of cultural and heritage organisations that are of international or national cultural significance, or that contribute to the levelling-up agenda, and that are at risk of no longer trading viably by the end of this financial year. 

The Government’s Culture Recovery Fund

At Arts Council England, our role is to administer the funding from Government across the breadth of the cultural sector, including to organisations with whom we have not previously had a funding relationship. We are working at unprecedented speed, while still making sure that our process is fair. We need to balance the need for organisations to have enough time to apply and for us to manage the high volume of applications we’re anticipating. We know that speed is of the essence and that organisations need to receive funding quickly, if they are to survive.

Over recent weeks, we’ve worked hard with DCMS colleagues to create a practical delivery mechanism that will ensure this money is distributed in a just and timely manner, according to the criteria the Government has set. We’re aiming to start notifying organisations of grant decisions at the end of September, and to get the majority of the funding to them by the end of October. Alongside this we are also administering the £2.25 million Emergency Grassroots Music Venue Fund, which is also part of the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund: Grant programme. Many music venues face immediate pressure, and we will begin to allocate this funding support from August.

We know that speed is of the essence and that organisations need to receive funding quickly

All this means that over the next few months we’ll need to work in an extremely targeted and efficient way, applying the highly focused processes that we used for our own Emergency Response Fund in the spring. The Government has confirmed that organisations which meet the criteria around financial need and viability, and cultural significance or levelling up, can apply for funding towards cultural activity as well as core costs. This is a positive development for artists and creative practitioners who are hungry to get back to work. But it’s important that we understand at the outset the limits around new work. It can only be produced and presented within the bounds of official Covid-19 safety guidelines at the point of application; its creation must not put an organisation’s financial viability at risk; and it must offer good value for money. And it’s also important to be clear that while this funding will provide critical support for the cultural ecology, its focus is not on freelancers. I blogged earlier this week about how we will use the Arts Council’s existing resources to complement the Government’s investment to ensure we are able to offer support to the artists and practitioners who are the lifeblood of our sector – you can read about that support here.  

Organisations will also be able to access other elements of support, such as repayable finance, through the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund, and further detail of this will be announced by DCMS in the coming weeks. We do know that a further £270 million will be made available through this programme, that organisations will be able to access either grants or repayable finance, but not both, and that any organisation seeking investment of £3 million or above will need to apply for repayable finance rather than a grant. The loan terms will include a repayment term of up to 20 years, an initial repayment holiday of up to four years, and interest of 2% per annum. We anticipate high demand for this programme, as both charitable and commercial organisations will be eligible to apply. Decisions on these awards will be made by the government’s new Culture Recovery Board, which was appointed by DCMS. This Board will be chaired by Sir Damon Buffini, and you can read more about the board here.  

The challenges ahead

The Culture Recovery Fund is the biggest-ever single investment by Government in the country’s cultural and heritage sector, and we are deeply thankful for the acknowledgement it represents of the exceptional constraints placed on cultural organisations by Covid-19, and the vital anchor role many of these organisations play in their communities. But I need to be honest with you at the outset: this money, significant as it is, will be nowhere near enough to support organisations to emerge from the crisis unchanged. Nor, as we witness the business collapses and redundancies taking place at shocking rates across the wider economy, should we reasonably expect it to. For our sector, too, there will be closures, job losses and suffering. I am truly sorry for this, and we will do all we can to minimise the pain.

The months ahead will be a difficult and uncertain time for all workers in our sector – both freelancers and those employed by organisations – and we’re going to have to rely on our leaders to make wise and compassionate decisions about where and how cuts and savings will be made. Many of the decisions taken now will have a profound impact of the shape and constitution of the next generation of cultural workers. In this context, we must rely on the leaders of cultural organisations to recognise the need to nurture a diversity of people and perspectives, because it’s this diversity that holds the key to the sector’s future ability to innovate, disrupt and understand the needs of audiences and participants. With that in mind, we’ve produced some new guidance to add to our culture change toolkit, which provides support around workforces, diversity and decision-making in this time of crisis. We hope it helps chief executives and boards in their decision making. We have published the guide, Caring for your workforce and making fair decisions in a time of rapid change.

Looking forward to a Spending Review and Let’s Create

I know we’re asking people to absorb difficult and uncomfortable realities in the here-and-now, but it’s also my job to point the way to the best possible future. With the announcement of the £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund, the Government made clear its belief that our sector was worth saving. Now, we need to work together to make the case that it is equally worth investing in over the long term.

Last week, the Chancellor launched the 2020 Comprehensive Spending Review, which will be published in the autumn. It will set out the Government’s spending plans between 2021 and 2024. As our country begins the work of recovering from Covid-19, the Government will have many worthy and competing demands placed upon its resources. 

It’s incumbent on us, therefore, to demonstrate clearly the real and measurable benefits that smart investment in creativity and culture can deliver – from the innovation and talent that drive our creative economy, to the soft power that the cultural sector provides our country on the international stage, to the dividends that creativity and culture generate in terms of community cohesion and individual achievement. 

As recipients of taxpayers’ and National Lottery players’ money, we have a responsibility to play our part in the post-Covid economic recovery and to meet the needs and interests of all people in all parts of the country, especially the less well-off, the excluded and the vulnerable. In the months and years to come, let’s make an offer to government and to our communities of an era of creative and cultural prosperity. And let’s make Let’s Create, Arts Council England’s strategy for the next 10 years, the contract that describes that offer, and points the way forward.