Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage Emergency Resource Support Reopens Call

The Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage: Emergency Resource Support is for organisations that are in severe need. The funding call has been reopened to further support the sector over winter.

The Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage is provided by the Government and administered by the National Lottery Heritage Fund in partnership with Historic England. The Fund is part of the £1.57 billion rescue package announced by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to safeguard cultural and heritage organisations across the UK from the economic impact of COVID-19.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund is distributing £40 million of this third round of the Culture Recovery Fund, in partnership with Historic England, based on criteria set by DCMS. The current round of funding has two strands:

  • Strand One: Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage: Emergency Resource Support – for organisations that are in severe need and have not yet received support from the Culture Recovery Fund.
  • Strand Two: Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage: Continuity Support – for organisations that are in need and have already received support from the Culture Recovery Fund.

The first allocations from this funding round were from strand one. This strand was originally open from 7 July 2021 to 30 September 2021.

To continue to support the sector throughout the winter period, the Emergency Resource Support programme has been reopened. This will give more organisations at imminent risk of financial failure an opportunity to bid for support, protecting even more organisations so that they can continue to create jobs and contribute to the economy.

In line with previous rounds of Culture Recovery funding, the central aims of this strand are to enable cultural organisations to:

  • Reopen/restart their operations, where appropriate; or
  • Operate on a sustainable, cost-efficient basis, so that they are able to reopen at a later date if, for example, reopening under social distancing is not permissible or does not represent a value for money approach.

Applications will be accepted from heritage organisations and businesses in England who have not been able to access any funding through the previous two rounds of the Culture Recovery Fund.

The budget for the reopened strand will be £5 million. Grants of between £10,000 and £1 million are available.

This funding call will be open until 11 January 2022.

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