Festival lifeline grant from Government’s Culture Recovery Fund 

Shropshire Festivals has been awarded £100 000 as part of the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) to help face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and to ensure they have a sustainable future, the Culture Secretary has announced today.

 Shropshire Festivals is one of 588 cultural and creative organisations across the country receiving urgently needed support – with £76 million of investment announced today. This follows £257 million awarded earlier in the week to 1,385 organisations, also from the Culture Recovery Fund grants programme being administered by Arts Council England on behalf of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Further rounds of funding in the cultural and heritage sector are due to be announced over the coming weeks. 

The Funding will help with the festivals on-going running costs as we plan 2021. We will be putting in measures to ensure the safety of our festivalgoers, exhibitors and volunteers attending events.

 Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said: 

“This is more vital funding to protect cultural gems across the country, save jobs and prepare the arts to bounce back. Through Arts Council England we are delivering the biggest ever investment in the arts in record time. Hundreds of millions of pounds are already making their way to thousands of organisations. 

“These awards build on our commitment to be here for culture in every part of the country.”

 Chair, Arts Council England, Sir Nicholas Serota, said:

 “Culture is an essential part of life across the country, helping to support people’s wellbeing through creativity and self-expression, bringing communities together, and fuelling our world class creative industries.  

“This latest set of awards from the Culture Recovery Fund builds on those announced recently and will help hundreds of organisations to survive the next few months, ensuring that the cultural sector can bounce back after the crisis.  We will continue doing everything we can to support artists and cultural and creative organisations, with further funding to be announced in the coming weeks.” 

Festival Director Beth Heath said: The funding will enable us to get back to putting on events into 2021 as we have been hit super hard with no events through the 2020 season. We had rising debts and this lifeline will help us to keep bringing great experiences to the people of Shropshire and beyond and stop this festival ship from sinking. We want to be back supporting the local producers, communities and charities we work alongside and get back to putting smiles onto people’s faces. We are so proud that the contribution we make to local culture has been recognised with the award of the grant, and it will enable us to put on the festivals we love with the measures in place to ensure the safety of our festival family of visitors, volunteers and exhibitors. 

We cant wait to be back in a festival field in the sunshine just as soon as we can and are extremely grateful to this fund for allowing that to be possible.