Access and diversity in the arts

Manchester City Council, with industry partners HOME, have announced a £500,000 hardship fund for freelancers working in Manchester, made possible by a generous gift from the Savannah Wisdom Foundation.

The Savannah Wisdom Foundation has created a discretionary fund to support freelancers working in the creative and cultural sectors who are facing financial hardship as a result of COVID-19. The charity is making up to £500,000 available in grants of £1,500 to individual freelancers.

Nesta’s Arts & Culture Finance has launched a new platform to showcase the potential of impact investment in the creative economy to drive social and environmental change.

The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games cultural festival has received £6 million in funding from Arts Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The funding will go towards staging a six-month-long cultural festival from March to September 2022. The funds will be ringfenced for West Midlands projects to be delivered ahead of the Games to positively impact communities.

The British Council has announced recipients of the Digital Collaboration Fund, supporting UK and overseas cultural partnerships to develop digitally innovative ways of collaborating.

After last year's online world-class ballet lessons with Tamara Rojo, Artistic Director and Principal Dancer, English National Ballet has launched a subscription service for on demand video classes for all skill levels. BalletActive is an additional service to ENB at Home which already offered full-length recordings of classic ballet performances for rent, including 'Akram Khan's Giselle' and 'Dust'. Learn more here.

The UK/Italy Season - the British Council’s first digital-led Season of Culture - took place 17 September - 30 November 2020. Supported by the British Embassy in Rome, it comprised over 50 virtual events spanning dance, literature, music, theatre and visual arts.

Southbank Centre has revealed the first digital Unlimited festival programme accessible to a global audience, featuring dance, performance, comedy, film, talks, workshops and art that celebrates the artistic vision of disabled artists over five days on 13-17 January 2021.

The Association for Independent Museums has launched a new fund to tackle inequality.

The AIM Hallmarks Grants support accredited museums or museums working towards accreditation in England, with grants of up to £10,000 available to support projects addressing AIM’s new Tackling Inequality Hallmark.

AIM will fund projects that support its new Tackling Inequality Hallmark - read more about this on AIM's website.

Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance has joined with Tomorrow’s Warriors to help redress the balance in representation at grassroots level in the UK jazz scene by reaching out to young musicians from diverse backgrounds. The new project, Jazz Hang, will launch in January 2021.

Creative Industries Federation (CIF) and Creative England (CE) have given their members on-demand access to its first online festival for the creative industries.

On 9-11 November 2020, Creative Coalition 2020 streamed live to over 5,000 attendees who, over three days, tuned in to some of the UK’s finest creators, makers, leaders and innovators taking part in inspiring talks, panels, live performances, practical workshops and networking events.