Organisations can apply for money from a £20million emergency fund in a third round of Cultural Recovery Fund grants, with more grants to come later in the year, Arts Council England has announced.
Organisations can ask for anything from £25,000-£3 million, though there is a £1 million cap for commercial operators.
The Arts Council has stipulated the maximum grant receivable over all rounds of the Culture Recovery Fund is £4 million for non-profit companies and only £1.5 million for commercial organisations.
Bidders must show they were thriving before the pandemic but face closure in the next three months despite being, in the document’s terms, “culturally significant”. They must also be able to show they have exhausted all other funding avenues. Recipients must be able to show they could continue into 2023 without more emergency help.
The Emergency Resource Support fund will be open from Thursday (July 15), until mid-October, and applicants should receive an answer within six weeks. Previous recipients of money from the Culture Recovery Fund aren’t excluded, but must be able to show a clear need for extra help from the second part of the third funding wave, a continuity support strand.
The funding is intended to help companies cover costs and assist in a return to financial stability by bridging the gap between costs and income, and can be used for essential expenditure from salaries to Covid-safe operating costs or even repayment of debts incurred because of the pandemic. It can also be used to pay for redundancies and to build operating reserves.