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Arts & Business Scotland launches fund to help culture through Covid-19 recovery

Arts and Business Scotland worked with V&A Dundee on its weekend of opening concerts, including Primal Scream.
Arts and Business Scotland worked with V&A Dundee on its weekend of opening concerts, including Primal Scream.

As Primal Scream took to the stage at the 3D Festival to celebrate the opening weekend of V&A Dundee, NCR employees were involved at every stage of the festivities, thanks to a partnership organised through Arts & Business Scotland.

The charity is responsible for bringing together business with arts organisations, not only for match funding but for the experience they can bring one another.

In the wake of disastrous Covid-19 closures, it is introducing a new funding strand to open up those opportunities to longer and stronger partnerships.

The new fund is an extension of the existing Culture & Business Fund Scotland (CFBS), which is managed by Arts & Business Scotland but funded by the Scottish Government via Creative Scotland.

V&A at opening weekend
Arts & Business partnered with NCR during the opening weekend of V&A Dundee to match funding and allow NCR employees to be part of the event. Photograph: Ross Fraser McLean.

This would usually only support partnerships where a business or public body is sponsoring arts for the first time or more than two years after having done so previously, but the new “COVID-19 Renewal & Recovery Strand” will be open to a much wider range of businesses, public bodies and culture organisations.

The new strand offers three years of 100% match funding between £1000 and £40,000 and is open to all, including those who have already received CFBS funding. It’s hoped that longer-lasting funding will bring more than just financial support and create a more rounded partnership.

More than a white knight

“There can be a perception that funding initiatives pairing the commercial and culture sectors is a white knight situation, where the arts, heritage or creative organisation is rescued by a business through solely financial support,” says David Watt, chief executive of Arts & Business Scotland. “With the Culture & Business Fund Scotland Covid Recovery & Renewal Strand this isn’t, doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be the case.

“Particularly now, after over a year of extreme uncertainty and varying degrees of isolation, businesses are looking at to how best to support staff and ensure the wellness of their workforce, and culture organisations can hold the key and provide diverse solutions.”

Tayside has been particularly successful in past Arts & Business Scotland awards, which have recognised events such as from the Royal Arch Project, which saw the much-missed structure reconstructed in cardboard on Slessor Gardens, a partnership between BAM Architects and creative producer Claire Dow.

NCR’s sponsorship of the 3D Festival was matched by the CBFS and meant employees could be part of the weekend of events.

“Becoming a sponsor meant our employees could be part of a major event within the city,” says Leigh Duncan, manager of the customer experience programme at NCR Financial Solutions. “The feedback was overwhelmingly positive as they felt they were deeply involved in the launch.”

Arts & Business Scotland will be running a series of free online workshops to help potential applicants and beneficiaries understand how to make an application to the fund. For more information visit www.andbscotland.org.uk/events