Heritage professionals in Europe are looking forward to the first calls of the renewed Creative Europe programme. Now that the programme’s budget has been set at €2.24b, cultural organisations and projects will start to prepare their applications for EU funding.
Budget Raise
The Creative Europe budget, the only EU programme dedicated to supporting European cultural cooperation, has been set at a record €2.24bn. This amount marks an €800m budget increase compared to the 2014-2020 era.
Creative Europe is part of the so called Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2021-2027. The MFF regulates the EU’s annual budget for the upcoming seven years. The framework sets a maximum to the EU’s spending budget for large sectors and continuing programmes. EU institutes reached an agreement regarding the MFF in November.
While the European Parliament’s CULT committee unanimously backed the agreement in January, Parliament and the Council of the EU still need to approve the financial legislation. Culture Action Europe estimates this can take months. This means the earliest calls for fundings could be out in April. The Creative Europe programme would probably announce the selection of the projects in autumn.
Sector Specific Funding
In a report on EU funding for culture, the German Creative Europe Desk KULTUR (DE) stated detailed information on the so-called ”new generation”: Creative Europe 2021-2027. The programme will be divided, like its forerunner in 2014-2020, into three sub-programmes: Culture, MEDIA and Cross-sectoral strand. It will also continue the four primary CULTURE funding schemes known from the previous cycle: cooperation projects, networks, platforms and literary translation.
Apart from the funding schemes, the report states sector-specific funding will be introduced within the next seven years. This step was already taken for the music industry in the previous programme. Building on the experiences of this project (Music Moves Europe), the sectors that will receive support from Creative Europe 2021-2027 are architecture and cultural heritage, design and fashion, and cultural tourism.
Increasing Competition?
A new addition to the programme is the possibility for small scale projects to apply for higher co-financing. The following rates were provided by the Creative Europe Desk NL at DutchCulture, but are without prejudice since a legal base needs to be provided.
- Small scale projects: minimum of 3 partners – maximum grant: €200.000 – funding rate: 80%
- Medium scale projects: minimum of 5 partners – maximum grant €1m – funding rate: 70%
- Large scale projects: minimum of 10 partners – maximum grant €2m– funding rate: 60%
Whether the (provisional) higher co-funding rate of small scale projects will cause an increase in competition remains to be seen.
Sources: Culture Action Europe (11-11-2020), Culture Action Europe (1-2-2021), European Parliament, Music Moves Europe, Creative Europe Desk KULTUR (DEU) and Wikipedia.
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