The UK Government has announced “over £270m” of funding for arts and culture in 2025-26, and that “more than £67m” of investment in new cultural infrastructure will go ahead.
The vast majority of this funding is ‘capital investment’ for buildings and infrastructure.
Arts Everywhere Fund
The Arts Everywhere Fund, announced by the Culture Secretary at the inaugural Jennie Lee Lecture, is comprised of a number of smaller funds. Most of these funds already existed, but are being continued – generally with modest uplifts. Three funds, totalling £110m, are brand new.
The Arts Everywhere Fund will support:
- Urgent building works and infrastructure upgrades in England (£250.5m)
- Running costs for civic museums in England (£20m) and the 15 museums and galleries sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (approx £15m)
- Community ownership of heritage buildings in England (£4.9m)
- Four cultural education programmes currently funded by the Department for Education (£3.2m)
Urgent building works and infrastructure upgrades
Over 85% of the Arts Everywhere Fund is for this purpose, supporting museums, libraries, heritage buildings and cultural venues in England.
Museums and national institutions
As part of its response to the Mendoza Review of Museums in England (2017), the Government announced twin capital investment programmes for vital infrastructure and urgent maintenance backlogs:
- The Public Bodies Infrastructure Fund (PBIF) for national cultural institutions, such as the national museums and galleries, the British Library and the British Film Institute.
- The Museum Estate and Development Fund (MEND) for non-national accredited museums.
At the 2021 Spending Review, the Conservative Government pledged £300m for the PBIF over three years – an average of £100m a year.1 For 2025-26, the Labour Government has pledged £120m to the PBIF, an increase of £20m (20%).
Over the last four years, the Conservative Government committed £86.6m to the MEND – an average of £21.7m a year.2 For 2025-26, the Labour Government has pledged £25m to the MEND, an increase of £3.3m (15%).
Libraries
Alongside the MEND, the Libraries Improvement Fund (LIF) was introduced to “enable public library services across England to upgrade buildings and technology to better respond to changing user needs”.
Over the last four years the Conservative Government committed £20.5m to the LIF – an average of £5.1m a year.3 For 2025-26, the Labour Government has pledged £5.5m, an increase of £0.4m (8%).
Heritage buildings
Heritage at Risk grants are given to support the repair and conservation of listed buildings, scheduled monuments and registered parks and gardens in England.4
In 2023-24 Historic England distributed grants totalling £8.1m to 191 beneficiaries.5
For 2025-26, the Government has pledged £15m towards the programme.
Other cultural organisations
The first and largest new fund is the Creative Foundations Fund, to which £85m has been pledged in 2025-26. This is for “urgent capital works to keep venues across [England] up and running”. Arts Council England will distribute the funding, and while they have not yet confirmed the details, we expect beneficiaries to include theatres, arts centres, galleries and music venues.
Running costs for civic museums and national museums and galleries
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport provides direct funding for 15 ‘national museums and galleries’ to support their day-to-day running costs. In real terms this funding decreased by about 9% over the 2010s.6 In 2025-26, these national museums and galleries will receive a 5% increase to their revenue budgets. This is intended “to support their financial resilience and help them provide access to the national collection”. Budgets are still being finalised, so the Government has not provided a figure in pounds and pence – however, it is estimated to be around £15m in total.7
Civic museums will benefit from the second new fund – the Museum Renewal Fund. £20m will be distributed “to help keep cherished civic museums open and engaging, protect opening hours and jobs, continue serving communities, and tell our national story at a local level”. Last October, the English Civic Museums Network warned that many civic museums “face a perilous financial position; the stark realities of this include wide-reaching redundancies and the imminent threat of sale of collections or closure”.8 The crisis has worsened as local authorities’ funding has declined; the Campaign for the Arts’ analysis has found that English councils have more than halved their culture spending since 2010.
Community ownership of heritage buildings
The third and final new fund is the Heritage Revival Fund – £4.85m to “empower local people to take control of and look after their local heritage, and to support community organisations to own neglected heritage buildings bringing them back into good use”.
Four cultural education programmes currently funded by the Department for Education
The Department for Education (DfE) currently funds a number of important arts and cultural programmes for children and young people – either directly or in partnership with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s arm’s-length bodies (e.g. Arts Council England, Historic England and the British Film Institute).
As part of the Arts Everywhere Fund, the DCMS is taking responsibility for the funding of four programmes in 2025-26 that currently receive funding from the Department for Education, at a cost of £3.2m. They are: the Museums and Schools Programme, the Heritage Schools Programme, the Art & Design National Saturday Club and the BFI Film Academy.
A statement on 7th February by the UK Association for Music Education – Music Mark suggests the Department for Education is also ending its funding for National Youth Music Organisations, and that Arts Council England has “agreed to cover the funding gap in 2025/26 so organisations’ budgets are not immediately impacted”.
It is currently unclear why the Department for Education has decided to end its funding partnerships for these cultural education programmes, which other programmes may be affected, and what the impacts will be on the budgets of DCMS and its arm’s-length bodies. We will be writing to the DfE to seek more information.
New cultural infrastructure investment
In March 2024, £100m of ‘Levelling Up’ funding for new cultural infrastructure was pledged by the previous Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt. It was due to benefit 6 “nationally significant” culture projects, 9 English and Welsh local authorities “most in need”, and the Northern Ireland Executive.
Then Rachel Reeves’ Budget in October 2024 signalled that the Government was ‘minded to cancel’ this investment entirely.
Now the Housing, Communities and Local Government secretary has announced that “more than £67m” of funding will in fact go ahead. There will be:
- £15m for the National Railway Museum in York
- £10m to start the process of revamping ‘Temple Works’ in Leeds
- £10m for the International Slavery Museum and the Maritime Museum in Liverpool
- £10m for Venue Cymru in Conwy, Wales
- £5m for the National Poetry Centre in Leeds
- £5m for City Centre Cultural Gateway in Coventry
- £5m for Newport Transporter Bridge, Wales
- £2.6m for the Victoria and Albert Museum in Dundee, Scotland
- £2.3m to three cultural projects in Worcester (reduced from £5m previously)
- £2.2m for Shore Road Skills Centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland
However, the funding previously pledged to 6 of the 9 English and Welsh local authorities – Maldon, Redditch, High Peak, Erewash, Mendip and North Northamptonshire – has not been committed.
CFTA snap analysis
The Campaign for the Arts believes that investment in the arts and culture benefits individuals, communities, society and the economy. It is extremely welcome to see new arts and culture funding committed by the Government.
Most of the pledged funding is for buildings and infrastructure. This is vital – because much cultural infrastructure (like much of the public realm) is sorely in need of upgrades and repair, and also because of the social and economic benefits that will flow from new cultural buildings and investment. Unfortunately, the sums committed so far are nowhere near enough to meet the total capital need of the sector, and around £33m of the £100m pledged by the last government for new cultural infrastructure projects looks to have been shelved.
While there will be new support for running costs of national and civic museums, there’s nothing yet confirmed to support the running costs of other cultural organisations. Crucially, there was also no additional funding announced for individual artists and artistic projects. There is little point in maintaining our cultural buildings without artists and artworks to go in them.
We would expect such support to be channeled through Arts Council England, but we have not yet had confirmation of Arts Council England’s total budget in 2025-26. It is vital that this is increased. The State of the Arts report found that the Arts Council’s budget decreased by 18% in real terms between 2009-10 and 2022-23.
While we are pleased to see funding continue for four cultural education programmes, we are also very concerned by the decision of the Department for Education to cease their funding partnership with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and its arms-length bodies for these programmes, and will be seeking more information.
The Government’s ambition to support the ‘Arts Everywhere’, and to channel the spirit and radicalism of Jennie Lee’s vision of arts funding and access, is laudable and extremely welcome. While this new investment represents a positive first step, far more will be required to realise that ambition in practice.
At the upcoming Spending Review in June, the Campaign for the Arts will be urging more public investment to unlock the benefits of the arts and culture for everyone.
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- PBIF and MEND Evaluation Framework, Historic England[↩]
- Museums and Galleries: Government Assistance, Written questions, answers and statements, UK Parliament[↩]
- Nearly 70 museums and libraries across England to benefit from £33 million boost, gov.uk[↩]
- Repair Grants for Heritage at Risk, Historic England[↩]
- Heritage at Risk: Latest Findings[↩]
- Total Income of DCMS-funded cultural organisations 2022/2023 and HM Treasury GDP Deflator (December 2023, 2022-23 prices)[↩]
- Struggling English museums get rescue funds, BBC News[↩]
- Chancellor asked to provide £20m emergency funding for civic museums, Museums Association[↩]
