Sector News

What Comes Next? The Arts Council’s Three Phases responding to the impact of Covid-19

The Arts Council are working with Government and the sector to establish three phases to support you through the Covid-19 crisis – they are response, stabilisation and reset.

Posted: 23/07/2020


These phases and their respective timelines are:1.     Response phase (March – September 2020)2.    Stabilisation phase (Estimated May 2020 – March 2021 The beginnings of this phase overlaps with our response work)3.    Reset phase (Estimated April 2021 – March 2024)   The Response Phase: Our aim in phase 1 has been to protect as much we can in the short term while we plan for what comes next.Repurposed funding. We’ve distributed £160 million of emergency response funds, largely from our National Lottery income.Relaxed funding conditions. We’ve advanced grant payments to assist with cash flow pressures and announced a year’s extension of the current National Portfolio.Other sources of support. We’ve regularly signposted to other support for the sector, including from Government and other funding providers.Gathering evidence. Our Covid-19 impact survey has helped us gather evidence about how best to respond to the crisis.The Stabilisation Phase: Our aim for phase 2 is to support you to reopen, when it’s safe to do so, to adapt business models and to help you operate in a changed environment.We’ll work with Government and the culture sector to protect the full range and diversity of our thriving cultural sector.We are gathering evidence, data and insight from the sector through conversations and a second Covid-19 impact survey. We’ll use the evidence we’ve gathered in phase 1, alongside research into audience attitudes and from international case studies to inform our conversations with DCMS and make sure we have a detailed understanding of the support required for you to reopen effectively.The Reset Phase: From early next year, our aim will be to support the sector to reset for the ‘new normal’.We’ll set in motion our three-year delivery plan for Let’s Create, our new 10-year strategy, which will also provide guiding investment principles for us over the coming months.The commitments outlined in Let’s Create will be more important than ever. We’ll invest in artists and cultural organisations to produce work that will deliver social and economic benefits for their communities and the taxpayers and National Lottery players who fund our work. This in turn will be central to our national renewal.More information and detail about what is involved in these three phases can be found here and on the in a statement from the Art Council’s CEO.LEAN’s article about the Arts Council’s Let’s Create strategy can be found here.


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