Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether the additional £30 million allocated to the Cultural Recovery Fund will be accessible to freelance creatives and other workers in the creative sector who are economically impacted by the covid-19 outbreak.

This £30m for the Culture Recovery Fund being made newly available for organisations will be used to increase the budget for the relaunched Emergency Resource Support strand of CRF in order to meet the demand from across the cultural sector.

Freelancers are supported through the Culture Recovery Fund by ensuring the venues and organisations which support them have survived the pandemic.

The Government announced on 23rd December that it has also provided an immediate £1.5 million to support freelancers affected by the pandemic, underpinning a further £1.35 million funding from the theatre sector. The Government, via Arts Council England, is providing grants of £650,000 each to charities Theatre Artists Fund and Help Musicians, and £200,000 to a-n, The Artist Information Company, a charity for visual artists, to give a much needed helping hand to freelancers over the coming weeks.