30.01.25
Creative Dundee is delighted to receive Multi-Year Funding for 2025–2028. Thank you to everyone who collaborates with us, as without you we wouldn’t be at this stage at all: partners, funders, board, staff, and especially the local creative community.
While celebrating this moment for our team, we also wanted to take the opportunity to share why Multi-Year Funding is so impactful and what this support will mean for us and Dundee.
Creative Scotland’s Multi-Year Funding (MYF) is “designed to support organisations delivering sustained programmes of creative and cultural activity” over three years, from 2025 to 2028. The decisions have been long-awaited and the fund highly competitive. Over 18 months ago, more than 500 applicants first submitted expressions of interest in advance of the application process, MYF then received 361 applications to stage 1 and saw 281 applications progress to stage 2, with a collected annual ask of £87.5m. Today’s announcement shares that 251 applications have been awarded MYF, enabling more than £200m in support.
Third sector organisations – like those who have applied to MYF – create public benefit from grant funding, playing a significant role in supporting people to imagine and act together to benefit our communities and place. This work actively humanises the systems we’re all a part of, making future-shaping accessible, equitable and collective.
While MYF is highly competitive and not all organisations have the opportunity to access it, it will be invaluable in supporting stability and enabling longer-term programming and planning for organisations within the sector. Although the right to participate in cultural life is a fundamental human right (article 27.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), funding for and funders of culture and creativity are very limited, and timelines are often year-to-year which, as the Scottish Parliament’s Social Justice and Social Security Committee have warned, puts unnecessary strain on the resources of organisations to actually deliver their programmes and services.
Dundee has always been defined by its culture and creativity. From its grassroots arts scene, established culture venues, digital and video games ecology, independent creative businesses, college and university students and staff, and more – everyone and everything is interdependent and interconnected.
This ecosystem is critical for Dundee, with all being close neighbours in our small and ambitious city. Collaboration is the city’s spirit and we are proud to be part of a vibrant cultural network who root for and support each other.
That said, Dundee’s small scale continues to be both its greatest strength and challenge. Creative communities who root themselves here bring incredible energy, actively collaborating to sustain, adapt and grow their respective and collective practices. But creative practitioners are also often ‘reluctant leavers’; they want to stay, but face the pull of bigger cities to further their careers.
Over the decades these factors have driven the city’s regeneration and, as highlighted by recent proposed council budget cuts, consistent funding alongside local authority support remains integral to sustaining Dundee’s cultural life and organisations, and helps pave the way for its future.
Joining Creative Scotland’s Regular Funded Organisation (RFO) network in 2018 was transformational for Creative Dundee, and it is hard to ignore the overwhelming impact that regular funding had on our capacity for future-thinking and investment.
Today’s news will offer more organisations this opportunity, and we’re thrilled to see an increase of organisations receiving MYF locally with recipients in Dundee including Art Angel, Dundee Ceramics Workshop, Generator Projects, Shaper/Caper and Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust. Some have also previously received Creative Scotland RFO funds, including DCA and Dundee Rep & Scottish Dance Theatre. With more organisations in Dundee joining the MYF portfolio, we’re hopeful that this will further strengthen our local ecosystem.
Nationally we’re delighted to see a broad range of organisations funded, including an increase in community-focused organisations. We look forward to working together over the next few years to explore opportunities for peer-learning and sector development.
While today’s news will be an incredibly welcome time for some, it will be an equally troubling time for others. MYF may not be enough in the face of rising costs and although it offers greater stability, the culture sector remains woefully underfunded and overstretched. Others who have been unsuccessful in their applications will need to find the resources to continue and the spaces left by those who simply don’t have the capacity will be greatly felt.
Despite the celebrations that this news brings, our collective work to advocate for better from government, local authority, and funders remains a priority if we want to continue to see bigger opportunities for Dundee and beyond.
The total funding of £473,667 we will receive for 2025–2028 makes up 56% of our income target and ensures we can continue to operate over the next three years, investing in people, programmes and our place. It reinforces our commitment to amplifying creativity in Dundee, fostering collaboration, and creating equitable opportunities for creative communities to thrive.
With the support of MYF, along with the contribution we receive from Dundee City Council (6% of our total income), we will continue to strengthen the city’s creative communities and centre creativity as a key catalyst for collective good. Our projects, events and activities will include:
We look forward to continuing and building our work across the next three years, and hope you can join us for the next stage in Creative Dundee’s journey.
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