Culture Action Europe analyses the recent developments:
Following the publication of the UK Government’s EU negotiation mandate the UK will not be seeking to participate in the next Creative Europe programme due to start in January 2021. Beyond the loss of funding, the UK’s retreat from Creative Europe could be a blow to the international mobility, visibility and connections that UK artists and cultural practitioners established thanks to this funding scheme.
Whatever the reasons that brought the British Government to withdraw from the Creative Europe programme, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for domestic funding to substitute the role of EU programmes in developing networks and cross-border collaboration within the Cultural and Creative Sectors (CCS). Read Culture Action Europe’s article on this topic.
The benefits that Creative Europe brought to the UK cultural and creative sectors in the last years are sustained by hard data. Creative Europe Desk (CED) UK reports how, since its launch in 2014 and until 2018, Creative Europe has awarded €89.5 million to 376 UK-based cultural and creative organisations and audiovisual companies (for an average of €18.4 million a year), and helped distribute 190 UK films in other European countries. Besides the direct sources of financing, Creative Europe grants leveraged additional funding: UK organisations involved in the Culture strand’s projects have more than doubled their Creative Europe grants, generating over €20 million in match-funding.