Culture Counts core members

Culture Counts membership is open to membership or representative organisations across the breadth of creative, cultural, and heritage industries. We work with a range of organisations including, but not limited to: 

1. Representative bodies (by artform, geography, or similar) 

2. Sector-support organisations 

3. Arm’s length organisations and Non-Departmental Public Bodies 

4. National organisations 

5. Unions 

We know that some parts of the sector are more formally established than others, and realise that traditional representative bodies may not exist (or work) for all groups. We are keen to enable membership for as much of the sector as possible, and will work flexibly to make that happen. If you are a network, voluntary group or informal coalition, or if you work via another structure that represents a part of the sector in a less-traditional manner, please get in touch. We’re keen to reduce and remove barriers wherever possible to ensure our network can genuinely reflect the diversity and breadth of the sector. Please note that we are happy to make free membership available to parts of the sector that are traditionally under-represented in advocacy spaces.  

Core Members work with Culture Counts to inform all of our advocacy work and priorities. As a core member, you’ll have the opportunity to network with peers across the breadth of the sector, advise and inform our response to key issues and opportunities facing the sector, and collaborate on whole-of-sector responses. This includes attending Culture Counts’ Core Member meetings, which typically take place twice a year, and offer opportunities to explore current topics or broader questions in the sector. We also hold ad-hoc Core Member meetings to inform and react to fast-moving funding and policy developments in the sector. 

Core Members benefit from close working relationships with Culture Counts’ team, including insights on trends, strategic developments and policy updates in the sector. They also have the opportunity to feed directly into our work through Core Member meetings, surveys, and topic-based requests for input. We host a “Members Spotlight” in our monthly journal, which gives the opportunity for Core Members to share the work they are doing to support the sector with our wider audience. 

We expect our members to actively take part in conversations that we are having at Culture Counts, and in the wider sector. As a network-based group, we value our Core Members' insights and use them to shape our advocacy work. We understand that some members have greater capacity than others (and that capacity may change over time or throughout the year), and offer a range of flexible ways to get involved. There’s no expectation that you are part of every conversation or initiative, simply that we find ways to understand one-another’s work, priorities, challenges, and opportunities.  

There are four cost tiers to membership, as follows: 

• £100/year: Volunteer or freelance-led organisations, or organisations that are project-funded with little or no core funding. Organisations that face considerable precarity . 

• £250/year: Organisations with multi-year funding (CS MYF or equivalent), more than 3 FTE staff members and/or an income of more than £200k per year. 

• £500/year: Large-scale organisations, typically with ongoing (relatively) secure funding, more than 8 FTE staff members and/or an income of more than £500k per year. 

• Free: By invitation to organisations or parts of the sector who are currently under-represented in the network, and/or those organisations for which financial barriers would prevent joining the network. 

If your organisation is interested in joining Culture Counts as a Core Member, please send an email to Kathryn Welch (she/her), Director - Networks, Projects and Partnerships at kathryn@culturecounts.scot. We would be happy to provide you with more information and discuss next steps.