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Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee 11 March 2021

11 Mar 2021 · S5 · Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee

Item of business

Cultural Sector (Impact of Covid-19)

Iain Munro Watch on SPTV

There was quite a lot wrapped up in your questions; I will try to steer my way through them. I agree that the issues are all important. I will address the question of demand in a second. We need to recognise that the hardship funds are a very specific intervention. They are about hardship relief: they make a contribution towards the personal costs of individual artists, creative practitioners and freelancers in the sector. There is no expectation that the funds will meet 100 per cent of individuals’ needs, but they are certainly a particular way of recognising that they are important people who are part of a thriving cultural and creative sector that needs help and support. It is also important to recognise that people who are creatively driven are compelled in their daily lives to continue to want to produce work. We are keen to make sure that we have avenues and channels of support available to them so that they can develop their practice, work in collaboration on new projects or ideas for the future or explore new opportunities. Alongside the hardship funds—the earlier iteration was the bridging bursaries programme—we recalibrated the open fund very quickly. That was one of our first moves. That created a specific channel for individuals with the aim of supporting them in their creative endeavour. People want to be purposeful in their receipt of public funding. Hardship funds have a distinct place, which is about relief, but we also have other mechanisms to support people to develop their creative output. With many of the other funds that have been channelled through organisational support, we have invited organisations to provide opportunities for active, productive work to support artists and the freelance community. It is very clear that, for everybody, the pandemic is going on much longer than anticipated. We know from our own research, which is covered in our submission, that a lot of people have lost income—on average, they have lost £15,000 a year. We know that many artists and freelancers have portfolio careers, and there is, naturally, a lot of interest in the hardship funds. Including through the bridging bursaries, we have developed a digital transformational approach—in all this funding, we have accelerated our digital approaches to support—that took a light touch. We simply invited people experiencing hardship as a result of Covid-19 to forward a simple online submission to which they attached a CV and a reference so that we could verify that they were an active freelancer in the creative community. That allowed them to request up to £2,000, plus access costs, if required. There was minimal fuss and bother in the way that people could access that funding and, because it was digitally supported, we could turn it around very quickly. Our target has been a maximum of six weeks and we have been able to largely deliver that. The demand is undoubtedly still there because the pandemic is on-going and opportunities for creative work are still relatively limited. We have seen high volumes in all the hardship funds. In the latest round of the culture organisations and venues recovery fund, the volume hit more than £7 million in the first 24 hours and then £8 million in 48 hours, so we paused it to enable us to hold back some of the £9 million for those who needed a bit more time. The majority of applications—75 per cent-plus—are from repeat applicants, so they are from those who applied to previous rounds. Because it is digital, the process that we have built has enabled people who were already on our system to come forward again with minimal information, given that they have already submitted their CVs and we have already verified their reference and so on. We have been able to move very quickly to turn that around. There are first-time applicants. Some people who may not have seen the opportunity previously or who may not have needed to access hardship support have now been given the opportunity to come forward. We are processing those applications with the intention of turning everything around by the end of March. The hardship fund reopens next Monday. We had always planned to keep it open until 22 March but, given where we are and the demand that we have seen, the expectation is that, when we reopen it on Monday, the balance of the £9 million—we have roughly £1 million available—will be eaten up quite quickly. We will do our very best to make sure that we continue to turn that around as quickly as possible.

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Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee 11 March 2021

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