But every project has one thing in common: the impact that it makes on Scotland’s creative culture and on our people. The CBFS doesn’t simply bring businesses closer to arts and heritage, it brings art and heritage closer to everyone.
Animation | Art & Health | Combined Arts | Craft | Dance | Design | Fashion | Festivals (including youth, community, film, general, literature, military, music, ethnic) | Film & TV | Galleries | Literature Music | Street Arts | Theatre | Visual Arts
Archaeology | Archives & Collections | Community Heritage | Historic Buildings & Monuments | Industrial, Maritime & Transport | Intangible Heritage (such as stories, traditions and concepts) | Land & Biodiversity (including urban green spaces and parks) | Libraries | Museums
Business sponsorship is different from earned income, subsidies, grants or donations. It’s a specific way of directing much-needed funding into worthwhile arts and heritage activities, at the same time as delivering clearly defined benefits to the sponsoring business itself. We define it as:
The payment of funds or goods in kind by a business to an arts or heritage organisation in exchange for agreed benefits. These benefits might comprise promotion of the business’s name, its products or services. The sponsorship must be part of the business’s general promotional expenditure and can address the business’s promotional work, corporate social responsibility (CSR) work and/or staff development.
For the sponsored activity, the match funding may be used get a project off the ground or to take it to a wider audience; to buy materials or equipment or to pay for venue hire; to cover the fees of key contributors or enhance presentation or production qualities.
This made possible the delivery of over 500 projects which might otherwise have remained in a folder marked ‘Great Idea. No Budget’.
From authors’ events at the Edinburgh Book Festival to Sunday afternoon concerts celebrating classical music, and from theatre for recovering alcoholics to media support for the Commonwealth Youth Dance Festival, projects came to light which touched new and diverse audiences, reached out to communities and under-represented groups, and secured Scotland’s place on a global, cultural stage.
On April 3rd 2017, the new Culture & Business Fund Scotland came into being to replace the old NASG but to sustain its outstanding contribution to collaborations between arts and heritage organisations and business sponsors across Scotland.
I am pleased to announce the transition to this new incentive funding programme which will build on the success of its predecessor, encouraging longer term cultural and business partnerships to benefit Scotland’s wider economy and society.
Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs
To promote project sustainability, successful applicants may also be eligible to apply for follow-on-year match funding for up to two subsequent years – allowing projects to grow and flourish with a secure financial framework in place.