At a reception held at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs, Fiona Hyslop announced that the Scottish Government will fund the Arts & Business Scotland New Arts Sponsorship Grants scheme for a further three years. £300,000 a year will be used to match fund new sponsorships of the arts, incentivising arts partners to find new sponsors and doubling the business benefits for those sponsors.
Barclay Price, Chief Executive, Arts & Business Scotland said ‘Scotland’s arts are internationally successful and underline the creativity that exists in our nation. Our match funding scheme offers businesses that have not engaged with the arts before or recently, the opportunity to double the impact they can obtain from engaging with that creativity to meet their business objectives.’
The New Arts Sponsorship Grants, funded by the Scottish Government in partnership with Creative Scotland, aim to increase business sponsorship in cash or in-kind to the arts. Delivered since 2006, the scheme has, in the last six years, encouraged over 300 new or returning business sponsors resulting in over £4.3 million of investment to the cultural sector. Businesses large and small and from all corners of Scotland have seen their investments matched and their sponsorship packages doubled. They have come from a range of sectors including finance, legal, retail, technology, energy and the creative industries.
The arts projects supported have taken place in locations from the Western Isles down to Dumfries and Galloway and included art forms such as puppetry, parkour (free running), piping, Japanese animation, opera and magic.
