Cross artform

The Business Banking Resolution Service (BBRS) has announced that cultural and creative sector businesses in the UK have six months to register unresolved historical banking complaints.

Eligible businesses with long-standing banking complaints must register cases with the BBRS before 14 February next year under a historical scheme that covers disputes first registered between 1 December 2001 and 31 March 2019.

Businesses qualify for the scheme if they had an annual turnover of between £1m and £6.5m at the time of their complaint and the case has not been settled, been subject to an independent review or gone to court. Businesses that have closed, merged or been sold are also eligible.

Recent cases can be assessed through the BBRS’s current scheme, open to businesses with an annual turnover up to £10m and total assets up to £7.5m with disputes ineligible for settlement by the Financial Ombudsman Service. 

“We want as many businesses as possible to have the opportunity to use the BBRS’ service,” said Dirk Paterson, Customer Director at the BBRS. 

“This includes businesses, trusts, charities, friendly societies and co-operative societies. It includes directors of businesses no longer operating. We urge them to see if they qualify for our help and, if so, to register.” 

 Liz Barclay, Small Business Commissioner, said that many small businesses are struggling and that rising costs may threaten their survival. 

“At no point has it ever been more important for a business owner to proactively challenge financial issues, whether that’s related to late supplier payments or tackling banking disputes,” she said. 

“I am pleading with all businesses to grasp this opportunity to have their banking complaints, many of which are long-standing, resolved.”
 

The Scottish Government has put an additional £2.1m towards the Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Edinburgh International Film Festival.

The extra funding is available through the Platform for Creative Excellence (PLACE) Resilience Fund and will support events marking the festivals’ 75th anniversary. 

Funded programmes include Edinburgh International Festival’s opening and closing events, and a free concert by the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, and Edinburgh Fringe’s Made In Scotland event, showcasing 27 Scottish artists, companies and ensembles.

The Scottish Government has invested more than £14m in the three festivals since the start of the pandemic.

Edinburgh Festivals Director Julia Armour said the financial support is “crucial not only to our ongoing recovery but also to our continuing ambition to bring increased opportunities to artists and audiences throughout the country, while also showcasing Scotland as a contemporary, creative, outward-looking nation”.

Performing arts and entertainment union Equity says the Edinburgh Fringe should compensate performers over the absence of the official app at this year’s event.

The Edinburgh Fringe app is widely considered to be vital for generating ticket sales. Earlier this month, an open letter from the Live Comedy Association, signed by over 1,600 performers, promoters and venues, condemned the Fringe Society for a lack of transparency over it's decision to withdraw the app.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society CEO Shona McCarthy has since apologised, adding “we really should have better communicated that the app would be one of the casualties of our financial constraints this year”.

Equity has acknowledged the Fringe’s apology but says partial refunds should be given to those who registered for the event before the announcement the app would be unavailable.

“This would be an important goodwill gesture and help repair the damaged relationship with performers at this year’s Fringe,” said Equity’s Organiser for Comedians Rob Lugg.
 
“The removal of the Fringe app could impact ticket sales as well as accessibility for disabled audience members. 

“This is concerning as two years of Covid restrictions have hit our members hard, and with an out of control cost-of-living crisis, the biggest threat to the future of the Edinburgh Fringe is performers deciding that they cannot afford to take part.”

Disabled arts commissioning body Unlimited is partnering with 17 UK organisations to deliver a funding programme for disabled artists worth over half a million pounds.

Funding has come from Arts Council England, Arts Council Wales, Creative Scotland and Unlimited's 17 partners and will be split across 20 awards, offering grants between £15k and £60k.

The pot includes £280k from the British Council, which will go towards international awards.

Unlimited says the programme will give disabled artists the chance to develop work across rural and city locations, either digitally or in person, sharing either collective or individual experiences.

Senior Producer Cat Sheridan said the programme reflects Unlimited's mission as a newly independent organisation to “challenge the cultural sector, change perceptions of disability and back disabled artists”.

“We cannot do that without working in partnership, and this year’s round of awards demonstrates not only national but international ambition and appetite for that change to happen.”

Applications will open 4 October and close 31 October.

Senior councillors in Leeds are set to vote on a new funding package for arts and culture projects as part of the Leeds City Council Cultural Investment Programme.

If approved, £1.6m will be made available for the arts@leeds grants programme. Applications would open in August, with funding available from April 2023, to align with the upcoming LEEDS 2023 year of culture.

The programme's first funding round supported more than 40 Leeds-based cultural, voluntary and community organisations delivering activity in every council ward. In 2021/22, these funded organisations generated £15.7m through ticket sales and income, with more than 75,000 people taking part in creative and cultural activities.  

Councillor Jonathan Pryor, Leeds City Council’s executive member for economy, culture and education, said Leeds has a “quite astonishing breadth of arts and cultural organisations delivering activity.”

“It makes a real, tangible difference at the heart of our communities as well as creating stunning, world class performances and events.”

“The funding programme has played an integral role in bringing many of those projects to life and we’re proud to be once again backing local cultural organisations and supporting their vision and ambition.”

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland has opened a range of funding programmes to support the work of individual artists as part of its Support for Individual Artists Programme (SIAP).

The programme provides funding to artists at all career stages, working across all artforms both domestically and internationally.

The funds now open for applications include the General Arts Award, which funds “specific projects, specialised research, personal artistic development and certain materials and equipment”; the Artists Career Enhancement Scheme, which offers training and mentoring to support the professional development of career artists; and the Artists International Development Fund, an annual programme that supports overseas opportunities for individual, freelance and self-employed artists and organisations.

Artists can apply to more than one scheme but will not be awarded more than one grant per funding round. The deadline for funding applications is August 30.

The SIAP Major Individual Awards is also open for applications until August 15. The scheme supports established artists with national or international recognition to develop “extended or ambitious work”, covering specific projects, specialised research, personal artistic development and materials and equipment.

The SIAP Minority Ethnic Residency and Mentoring Programme is accepting applications until August 22. The scheme is designed to create opportunities for “specialised training, research, cultural exchanges, networking and learning for individual artists, creative practitioners and arts administrators from minority ethnic and migrant backgrounds”.

The SIAP Travel Awards, a rolling programme, is accepting applications for individual artists and music groups of up to four members to visit a host organisation outside Northern Ireland to develop skills and expertise.