Finance

DCMS is extending its UK Global Screen Fund for three years with an additional £21m of funding.

Designed to boost international development and distribution opportunities post-Brexit, the fund supported more than 65 productions in its £7m pilot year.

According to DCMS, the continued investment will increase exports of UK film, TV and video games in new territories, help productions promote work at film festivals and support companies to hire staff with specialist skills.

It is split into three strands with the first, a channel aimed at supporting the sale and distribution of UK feature films overseas, reopening today (17 May).

Two subsequent strands, aimed at international business development and international co-production, will relaunch in the coming months.

Ben Roberts, CEO of BFI, administers of the fund, said international collaboration is fundamental to making new films and dramas that audiences around the world want to see.

“We are proud of the incredible craft and talent within our screen industries, and look forward to how we can help grow opportunities for the UK globally over the next three years of this essential fund."

DCMS is reopening the Cultural Investment Fund with £128m available across three funding streams.

This latest round is made up of a £30.8m Cultural Development Fund, £20.5m Libraries Improvement Fund and a £60.3m Museum Estate and Development Fund.

It follows a previous round in March, when 63 organisations shared £48.1m.

First launched in 2019, the fund aims to improve accessibility of the arts and safeguard the future of locally-led cultural projects, museums and public libraries in England.

DCMS says support will be targeted to areas which have historically lower levels of cultural investment.

Organisations are now being encouraged to submit expressions of interest for the appropriate strand at Arts Council England’s website.

The Gatsby Charitable Foundation is gifting £6m to the Royal Academy of Music, the single biggest donation in the institution's 200-year history.

The money will fund the Gatbsy Chair of Musical Theatre, the first fully-funded endowed chair at any UK conservatoire.

Two further anonymous donations are funding the Dame Myra Hess Chair of Piano and the William Lawes Chair of Chamber Music.

The three endowed chairs boost the launch of the Academy’s bicentenary campaign, which aims to raise £60m to invest into facilities, staff retention and funding future musicians.

Academy Principal Jonathan Freeman-Attwood said the donations are “a truly wonderful start” to the bicentenary.

“The Academy’s bicentenary affords us the opportunity to future-proof the values which have defined our work since 1822 while offering a transformational set of opportunities for talent to thrive, regardless of background.”

The UK’s share of the global art market fell to a historic low in 2021, according to the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report.

The UK’s $11.3bn share equated to 17% of the global market, 3% less than the year before.

The US recorded the largest market ($28bn), while the Chinese market replaced the UK as second largest in the world ($13.4bn).

The report attributes the decline in part to Brexit and the continued imposition of VAT on art imports. 

“Some domestic EU art trade has been transferred outside of the UK, boosting markets such as France and Germany,” it reads.

Chairman of the British Art Market Federation (BAMF) Anthony Browne says the report “did not make for easy reading from the UK's perspective”.

“[The UK’s] failure to take advantage of the opportunities offered by Brexit and remove the barrier of import VAT [has] put us at a disadvantage on every level”.