Inventive Scotland has confirmed it’s reinstating its flagship Open Fund.
The humanities organisation introduced earlier this 12 months that the Open Fund could be closing, citing lack of funding from the Scottish authorities. In an announcement on the time, Inventive Scotland famous:
Inventive Scotland has taken the troublesome determination to shut the Open Fund for Individuals to new purposes as a result of Scottish Authorities being unable to substantiate launch of £6.6m in Grant-in-Help finances within the present monetary 12 months, 2024-25.
The transfer caused a storm of criticism, with Inventive Scotland chief govt Iain Munro commenting: “This determination to shut the Open Fund for People isn’t one we might have needed to take however is unavoidable with out the funding from the Scottish authorities being accessible.”
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Now Inventive Scotland has confirmed that the Scottish authorities have been capable of allocate full funding, enabling them to reinstate the Open Fund programme.
In an announcement, the organisation feedback:
The Open Fund for People has been beneath growing stress. Since 2019, purposes have greater than doubled – from 628 to 1,395 in 2022/23, with funding requests growing by £7.8 million to £21.2 million. Notably, there was a 42% enhance in requested funding previously 12 months alone. Nevertheless, throughout this identical interval, Inventive Scotland’s budgets have remained on the identical degree, making this development unsustainable.
To assist tackle this, Inventive Scotland is revising the Open Fund for People to higher meet the rising demand. Updates will embody the utmost award quantity decreasing from £100,000 to £50,000 and determination timescales extending by two weeks. The up to date steering can be printed on Tuesday 8 October.
Chief Govt Iain Munro says: “We recognise the effort and time that goes into making use of for funding and understand how important these funds are for the sector. We perceive how difficult latest occasions have been and sincerely thank everybody for his or her continued efforts in highlighting the worth of tradition and creativity.”
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