2012-07-20

£56m endowment grants awarded to arts and heritage organisations

Thirty four organisations across England set to get a £162 million funding boost.

In the first round of funding from the Catalyst: Endowment programme, 34 organisations are set to receive a share of £56 million to support their endowments. Boosting private giving for culture is key to putting arts and heritage organisations on the path to long-term financial stability, said Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

It is very gratifying to see that so many have already been successful in attracting match-funding and I am grateful to all those companies and individuals who so generously support our arts and heritage bodies.

Match-funding

Designed to bring new money into the cultural sector, the programme which is jointly funded by DCMS, Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund offers match-funding to help arts and heritage organisations become more sustainable and resilient by building new endowment funds or developing existing ones, in order to increase their annual income.

The organisations will use the grants of between £500,000 and £5 million to attract money from private philanthropic sources. Successful projects are expected to attract an additional £106 million from donors with many already securing pledges, or continuing discussions with prospective sponsors. As a result the scheme is expected to lever £162 million extra in funding for these organisations.

Successful organisations include:

The Halle Concerts Society which will receive £1 million to create an endowment to support educational activity at St Peter's Ancoats and more ambitious large-scale artistic projects;
Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust in Bristol which will receive £500,000 to build an endowment to help secure the future of the 45 acre site, saved from commercial development by local people, where a sensitive restoration programme is now underway;
Birmingham Royal Ballet which will receive £1 million for an endowment which will be used to fund a dance fellowship that will support young dancers;
The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, County Durham, which will receive £1 million towards creating an endowment fund that will generate income to support the Museums internationally significant collections of fine and decorative arts;
The Serpentine Gallery which will receive £3 million to create an endowment which will support activity at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery;
The Old Vic Theatre which will receive £5 million to create an endowment which will support long-term resilience and arts activity;
St Martin-in-the-Fields in London which will receive £1 million towards building a major endowment to secure the long term maintenance of the recently restored Grade I listed buildings; and
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) which will receive a match-funding pledge of £5 million to support the Museum's ambitions to build a £100 million endowment over the next 15 to 20 years. The endowment will support its core scholarly activities that include research and conservation, alongside its permanent collection of over 2.75 million objects.

Image above: Victoria & Albert Museum London, photo by heatheronhertravels

Dept. for Culture, Media and Sport, United Kingdom

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