More Organisations Up North Receive Funding From The Cultural Recovery Fund

There are 1,385 cultural and creative organisations across the country receiving urgently needed support.

Here are just a few of the organisations in the North who are benefitting from the funding:

Bradford Theatres has been awarded up to £894,423 as part of the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) to help face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and to ensure they have a sustainable future.

Bradford Theatres, which includes the Alhambra Theatre, St George’s Hall, The Studio in the city centre, and King’s Hall and Winter Garden in Ilkley, is run and managed by Bradford Council.

The venues serve some of the most densely populated cities in the North of England as well as isolated rural areas, including areas of high depravation and low cultural engagement. The grant will mean that Bradford Theatres can continue its education and outreach work, offering local students engagement opportunities.

This grant is hugely welcomed as a lifeline for these iconic venues, helping to support and preserve Bradford’s arts and cultural life for the future.

Bradford’s Mind the Gap has been awarded £150,000 as part of the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund (CRF).

Mind the Gap is one of Europe’s leading companies that creates live performance experiences with learning-disabled artists taking centre stage. This DCMS grant funding will ensure the company can continue to develop its work, and explore new digital technology and film opportunities, so that learning-disabled artists can play their role in England’s cultural recovery.

It will be invested in new artistic activity including film outputs and broadcast that build on the success of recent live touring productions like ‘a little space’, which was co-produced with internationally renowned physical theatre company Gecko. It will also enable Mind the Gap to explore new projects and ways of working, including a family show in collaboration with fellow Bradford company 509 Arts.

Hull Museums has received a £145,692 grant from the government’s Cultural Recovery Fund.

The grant will be used to support Hull Museums’ learning offer, Heritage Learning.

The grant received by Hull Museums is the full amount that was bid for by Hull City Council and Hull Culture & Leisure.

Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre has been awarded £247,705 as part of the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund (CRF).

The SJT has provided world-class accessible theatre for audiences on the Yorkshire coast since 1955. It’s produced almost 700 plays, many of them new – developing new writers and writing was the primary aim of the company’s founder, Stephen Joseph, and it remains one of the theatre’s core aims. The theatre also has a busy cinema, and a very active OutReach department, which works with the community both inside and outside the building.

Thackray Museum of Medicine, the UK’s largest independent medical museum, has been awarded £373,281 as part of the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) to help face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and to ensure they have a sustainable future.

After closing in May 2019, the museum set to embark on a large-scale redevelopment project, the biggest since its opening in 1997. With 11 new galleries, a new café and shop, the refurbishment is set to tell the story of medicine – a subject which could not be more relevant at this time in our lives – in new and dynamic ways.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, and subsequently, a nationwide lockdown, the museum had been closed for nearly a year and was set to reopen in July 2020. Due to lockdown, project operations ceased, progress halted, and the museum was forced to extend the length of closure and schedule a new reopening date for autumn 2020.

Now, thanks to the Government’s Cultural Recovery Fund, Thackray Museum of Medicine can move forward with plans to reopen safely.

York Museums Trust have received £850,000 from the Government’s Cultural Recovery Fund to help the charity survive the next six months.

The money will help York Museums Trust remain financially viable in the immediate future, having already sustained losses of more than £1.8 million because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Further rounds of funding in the cultural and heritage sector are due to be announced over the coming weeks.