Culture Republic has received a welcome boost for the year end having been selected as one of five development agencies* to secure guaranteed funding from Creative Scotland for 2016/17.

Julie Tait, chief executive of Culture Republic, welcomed Creative Scotland’s announcement to protect arts funding cuts this year. She said:

It is great to be recognised as the lead development agency for public engagement in Scotland as we play a vital part in the sustainability and resilience of the sector. Our activity creates more value around audience intelligence in Scotland, and can move forward at pace in 2016.

 

Although the New Year brings every cultural organisation in Scotland new challenges, this sustained funding gives us opportunities to cast the net even wider across Scotland. We have a unique role in Scotland ……offering practical advice and support to build new collaborations, productive conversations and positive connections, linking organisations across and beyond our sector to find and grow audiences.

As well as supporting individual organisations with insights into audiences and market data, in 2015 Culture Republic measured the impact of Scotland’s biggest festivals, and examined connections between the audiences for culture and tourism with the team at Scottish Enterprise. Big questions were tackled head-on around equalities, diversity and inclusion through the first Access All Areas national conference, which brought together over 200 cultural professionals in Edinburgh in October. All this activity was driven by insights drawn from our research and Scotland’s biggest dataset on cultural audiences. Hosted by us for the last eight years, this dataset stands to benefit every cultural organisation across the country and provide powerful evidence of the impact on public engagement.

* The other development agencies receiving funding are Arts and Business Scotland, Creative Carbon Scotland, The Federation of Scottish Theatre and Cultural Enterprise Office.