Creative Scotland Update 27 March 2020

"Since the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic's likely impact on the Scottish arts and creative industries sectors became clear two weeks ago, Creative Scotland staff have been working at pace to repurpose our funding programmes.

Creative Scotland are today launching a new "Bridging Bursary" fund a non-competitive programme to assist self-employed artists and creative practitioners who are experiencing significant financial challenges due to the cancellation of contracted work over the coming 12 weeks.

The fund has just gone live on our website here:

https://www.creativescotland.com/funding/funding-programmes/bridging-bursary

With a budget of £2m, the fund will provide one-off bursaries of up to £2,500 to those who consider themselves in immediate financial need. The fund will not be means tested and all those who are eligible will receive funding (to the limits of the funds available), hence we are trusting those in the sector, in the spirit of solidarity with their peers, to only request funds if they are in genuine need.

The full eligibility criteria for the fund briefly are:

Bridging Bursaries are open to:

• Freelance professionals whose work has direct creative outcomes. They might be a visual artist in any medium, a writer or maker of poetry, prose or fiction, a playwright, actor or theatre-maker, a dancer, musician, maker or designer. They will derive a significant proportion of their income from their role in creating or producing original artistic, creative or design material, and will invoice for this work direct.
• Freelance professionals whose work directly supports the making and presentation of creative work including events. They might be a theatre producer, a lighting designer, a gig promoter, an independent curator or creative producer. They will derive a significant proportion of their income from their role in supporting or producing original artistic, creative or design material and events, and will invoice for this work direct.

To be eligible they must demonstrate this via a CV and a named referee. Referees will only be contacted if the CV does not clearly demonstrate a freelance professional creative practice.

I am emailing you, representatives of organisations that support individual artists and creative practitioners across a range of artforms and areas of practice, for two reasons: to inform you about the fund in order that you might make your contacts/members aware of it; and to highlight that it is likely that your contacts/members may ask you to be a referee for their request. Indeed, a number of you are named as examples of potential referees in the guidance document.

Please be assured that, if we do contact a referee, the process is simple. A form email will ask you to confirm whether: a) you can confirm that the individual has a freelance professional creative practice; or b) you are unable to provide a reference. We will allow 10 days for responses.

We hope that this will be a relatively straightforward way of supporting freelance artists and creative practitioners to receive vital funds in this moment of unprecedented precarity in the sector."