Culture: Rural Areas

Arts Council England has invested £539,520 in Chippenham since April 2022 through a combination of regular funding and project funding for individuals and organisations such as Folio, a dynamic, female-led new writing theatre company, which received £122,329 over 2 project grants.

In addition, Arts Council England’s open-access funds are available across England, including in market towns such as Chippenham. This includes:

• National Lottery Project Grants – open to applications between £1000 and £100,000. Arts Council England is currently focused on three time-limited priorities: Supporting Grassroots Music, Museum Unlocking Collections and Universal Library Offers projects.
• Develop Your Creative Practice – awards from £2000 to £12,000 that support individual creative and cultural practitioners to focus on their development and take them to the next stage of their practice.
• Capital – financial assistance to museums, libraries and arts organisations to invest in buildings, equipment, digital infrastructure and technology with a view to securing their longer term viability and sustainability. For the financial year 2025/2026 the Libraries Improvement Fund (LIF) will provide funding for public libraries of up to £500,000 (total available £5.5m).
• Museum Estate and Development Fund (MEND) – Funding for urgent repairs to accredited non national museums up to £5m (total available £25m).
• Creative Foundations Fund (CFF) – Funding for equipment and buildings for arts organisations – Strand 1 up to £1m and Strand 2 Over £1m and up to £10m (total available £85m).

The Creative Industries Sector Plan will be published shortly, announcing new measures to grow the creative industries across the whole of the UK.