ACE More Emergency Funding for Cultural Organisations and Creative Individuals
What’s our take on these measures.
Tuesday 11 Jan 2021
On 23 December 2021, the Arts Council of England (ACE) announced that “further emergency funding available for arts, culture and heritage doubled to tackle impact of Omicron, and more support for individuals”.
While we welcome such a decision, after almost 2 years of debate regarding the inadequacy of the Culture Recovery Fund, with a slight improvement, and embracement, of some of the points we challenged, such as the fact that organisations, especially those so-called “for-profit” had access to huge sums of money despite the Government’s Furlough Scheme that was put in place, which guaranteed salary payments for employees, saving considerable sums of money for employers.
According to the new guidance, the Culture Recovery Fund: Emergency Resource Support Round 2 cannot be used to cover:
Costs that are eligible to be covered by other strands of Government support including Covid-19 support received through other schemes that are incompatible with the Culture Recovery Fund ;
The optional salary costs are not covered by the Government’s Job Retention Scheme for hours not worked by staff on furlough, or any additional optional salary costs for hours not worked about the furloughing cap.
While these are clearly late steps forward, towards the right direction, - very much in line with what we contested with regards to the very first Round of support- , we still need to register the fact that such new emergency funds still include support for corporate and for-profit organizations.
It is important to highlight how these have already received huge sums of money in the previous months, while also actively contributing to the spreading of the COVID-19 virus with insecure events and activities, which have exposed peoples’ health and safety to potentially harmful circumstances, due to various factors, as indicated by the Events Research Programme report published at the end of 2021.
We believe that greater efforts are needed to thoroughly support the sector, especially its core, made of thousands of independent individuals and professionals, rather than the mere “£1.5 million investment into three benevolent funds that provide immediate financial aid for individuals working across the cultural sector”, which seem a very weak measure, illustrating a total misunderstanding of the complex cultural and creative environment, of which corporates and for-profit organisations only play a marginal, but monopolistic, part of.