National Lottery Good Causes: DCMS consultation response

Culture Counts has responded to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s call for evidence on the future of National Lottery good cause funding.

Since 1994, the National Lottery has generated over £53 billion for good causes across the UK, funding elite and grassroots sport, cultural institutions and local community projects. The consultation is an opportunity to feed into future strategy for how this funding can better align with sector priorities, reach the areas that need it most and reduce bureaucracy.

Culture Counts’ full response is available here. Highlights of the submission include evidence on:

• The importance of National Lottery funding to the cultural ecosystem, especially in terms of funding for individuals and small organisations via Creative Scotland’s open funds

• The failure of National Lottery funding to meet the level of need and demand within the sector, with evidence to demonstrate that success rates are low, the total available funds are falling, and the average grant award fails to keep pace with inflation.

• Illustrations of the ways that time-limited, project-specific or relatively small-scale National Lottery grants build - over time- an infrastructure of expertise and support that realises cumulative impact well beyond their individual scale.

• The public benefit of funding the arts - in unlocking long term and strategic impact, as well as direct, tangible and more immediate benefits.

• The experience that creative organisations can bring to informing the National Lottery’s future interest in co-creation and participatory decision-making.