Culture Recovery Fund for Independent Cinemas: Round 3

At the 2021 Budget Review, the Chancellor announced an additional £300 million to support the Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) in 2021 / 2022, to continue to support key cultural organisations as they reopen for their audiences while maintaining COVID-safe spaces and accessibility, and to ensure a vibrant future for the culture sector as the nation recovers from the pandemic.

The aim of this funding is to help maintain England’s cultural ecology by supporting culturally significant organisations, which are now at imminent risk of failure due to the ongoing impact of COVID-19, and have exhausted all other options for increasing their resilience. 

Applications to this fund are by permission only and links to the applications forms will only be sent to those who have completed a permission to apply form and received an affirmative response. Organisations should apply at the point at which they are 12 weeks from ceasing to trade viably and no earlier.

All permission to apply forms must be submitted by midday 18 January 2022.

If eligible to apply, we will email you a link to a full application form and supporting financial pack that must be submitted by 4 February 2022. 

If you have read the ERS fund guidelines and are unsure whether you are eligible to apply, or if you require additional support using the application form, please contact us on audiences@bfi.org.uk.

The following documents are for Culture Recovery Fund Round 3 – Emergency Resource Support. Rounds 1 and 2 of the Culture Recovery Fund for Independent Cinemas in England are now closed to new applications.

Please ensure you have read the most up to date fund guidelines before you complete the application form.

Culture Recovery Fund Repayable Finance recipients are eligible for Emergency Resource Support.

We have changed the incorporation date criteria in the Culture Recovery Fund: Emergency Resource Support Round two guidance for applicants to now allow organisations who were incorporated on or before 30 September 2019 to be eligible to apply for £1,000,000 and under. This is to enable more organisations potentially impacted by the Omicron variant to have the opportunity to apply for emergency support before the deadline for Permissions to Apply to be submitted at 12:00 (midday) on 18 January 2022. We would expect these organisations to have filed their first accounts on Companies House at the point of submitting a Permission to Apply.

You will be required to complete the financial template below as part of your application.

You must use the permission to apply financial template provided and must attach it to your application as a Microsoft Excel Worksheet (.xlsx). If you submit a pdf version, your application will be considered ineligible and you will be asked to resubmit.

The Culture Recovery Fund for Independent Cinemas is part of the UK government’s cultural recovery package providing £1.57 billion, the biggest ever single investment in this country’s cultural and heritage sectors. To date, over £1.2 billion has been allocated from the Culture Recovery Fund, reaching over 5,000 individual organisations and sites.

As part of this package, the fund, administered by the BFI, has awarded a total of £33.8 million to 209 independent cinemas across England, from Penrith to Penzance. This has meant that 78% of eligible cinemas for the fund have been awarded grants to date, of which 89% of cinema sites that received an award are outside London. Find out more.

For venues in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, please contact your Screen Agencies for further information: NI Screen, Screen Scotland and Ffilm Cymru Wales.

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62 cinemas have been awarded £6,210,382 by the BFI in Round 3 of the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund.

209 cinemas have been awarded £27,628,642 by the BFI in Rounds 1 and 2 of the Culture Recovery Fund.