Funding changes at Arts Council England

Arts Council England's Grants for the Arts fund has long been a backbone of funding for the Outdoor Arts sector and closed on 1 Mar 2018. In its place, National Lottery Project Grants open for applications on Mon 5 Mar 2018. If you're eligible to apply for Grants for the Arts, don't worry, you will still be eligible to apply for Project Grants. Project Grants is the Arts Council's new open access programme for arts, museums and libraries projects, funded by the National Lottery. The fund will support thousands of individual artists, community and cultural organisations.

Changes include:
•Increasing the budget for Project Grants, with £97.3 million available each year for museums, libraries, artists and arts organisations, with additional funding helping to further support the integration of museums and libraries.
•Project Grants will also be more open to supporting those working in creative and digital media than Grants for the Arts.
•Strategic Touring and Ambition for Excellence funds will be absorbed into Project Grants, with £14 million per year reserved to support nationally significant and national touring projects of over £100,000.
•National Portfolio Organisations will be able to apply for some of the national activity previously supported by Strategic Touring and Ambition for Excellence.
Project Grants support projects focused on music, theatre, dance, visual arts, literature, combined arts, museum practice (accredited museums only) and libraries (arts-focused projects only). A project might sit exactly within one of these supported disciplines, across a few of them, or involve one of them working with another non-arts discipline. Project Grants will fund projects that focus on engaging people in England with arts and culture. Read more at the link below.

For more information visit http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/projectgrants?mc_cid=c42fe8bd9f&mc_eid=799e63875c