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The Scottish Government understands the important role independent music festivals play in Scotland’s cultural scene, and wants to help ensure festivals will be able to take place in 2022. Support for music festivals that is provided in 2022 builds on the previous £240 million of financial support which the Scottish Government has provided to the culture, heritage and events sector to support its recovery from the COVID 19 pandemic.

The Scottish Government recently announced £2 million of events sector funding through VisitScotland’s National and International programmes. Depending on their circumstances, independent music festivals could have been eligible to apply to the 1st round of the National Programme which closed on 11 February. This is for events taking place from 1 April to 31 August 2022. Round 2 is now open and covers the period 1st September – 31st December. Grants of up to £25,000 are available.

The Scottish Government would also encourage Scottish Music Festivals to apply to Creative Scotland’s Open Fund. This Fund is open to projects from across the Culture sector, and as music is one of the creative industries, music festivals are able to apply.

The £750,000 Scotland on Tour fund, managed by Active Events, will support musicians, venues and festivals to bring new and additional concerts to venues and festivals in Scotland during 2022. The Scotland on Tour working group consisting of representatives from the music sector, Creative Scotland and the enterprise and skills agencies, will actively be looking at how the project can support festivals in future funding rounds.

The Scottish Government is also working with partners to consider what more we can do to support public confidence to return to events and cultural performances.

The Cancellation Fund for Creative Freelancers opened on 6 January and closed on 21 January. It provided much-needed support to creative freelancers experiencing cancellations due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.

The total number of applications received by Creative Scotland was 1,946. The number of approved applications was 1,766. Of these approved applications, so far 1,763 have been paid in full.

The budget for National Records of Scotland is made up from two elements. The core budget for service delivery and the programme budget for Scotland’s Census. The Census Programme budget runs to 2024/25 with peak spend in the years around Census day. Scotland’s Census 2022 ‘goes live’ on 28th February, with Census day being 20th March 2022. Throughout the lifecycle of the Census Programme the budget requirement has fluctuated year on year in line with the requirements to deliver this key digital programme. Over the last two years the budget allocation to NRS for the Census Programme element has been £38.4m and £35.1m for 2020-21 and 2021-22 respectively.

While the Census Programme budget allocation has reduced over the last two years, reflecting requirements for spend, the remainder of the resource funding allocated to NRS, which funds the core operating costs of the organisation, have not seen a similar reduction. Funding for NRS core operating costs has remained stable across the two years.

Since 2008 the annual Festivals Expo fund has invested over £30 million in the festivals to support innovation, collaboration and artist development. This year funding will also support festival resilience plans following the Covid-19 pandemic.

The recipients of this year’s £2 million Expo Fund were announced on 8th February 2022. The fund is managed by Creative Scotland who have noted that all eligible festivals should receive their contracts and first payments from this year’s fund, by mid-April 2022 in line with timescales from previous years.

All of the £375 million identified by the Scottish Government to provide businesses with support has now been allocated, including underspend from some of the funds, where business demand has been less than initially forecast.

I wrote to all MSPs in January to provide an update on how the initial £276 million of the £375 million Omicron business support package had been allocated.

On 10 February, I set out how a further £39.5 million of the funding package would be allocated, and on 21 Feb we announced the £80m Covid Economic Recovery Fund for local authorities to support local economies and cities recover from the pandemic.

As with all our previous business support funding, we are publishing management information on the funding paid out to businesses from this support package on a weekly basis.

The Cancellation Fund for Creative Freelancers has provided much-needed support to creative freelancers experiencing cancellations due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.

Since opening the fund on 06 January, Creative Scotland received 1,946 applications to their Cancellation Fund for creative freelancers, totalling £3.33m.

On 21 February, Creative Scotland announced a further £8m support would be available to creative freelancers via a Hardship Fund for Creative Freelancers. This fund opened for applications on Wednesday 23 February and will support creative freelancers experiencing hardship due to lost income from work or practice in the creative sector due to Covid-19.

The Strategic Framework Business Fund made payments to businesses from November 2020 to March 2021. The Local restrictions fund made payments to businesses made from May to July 2021. The Scottish Government has regularly published management information and statistics on all Covid-19 business support funds covering payments made from January 2021 to January 2022: Coronavirus (COVID-19): business support funding statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

A summary of business support funding paid out since the start of the pandemic is available on the Scottish Government website, providing Scotland-wide management information on the funds delivered up to January 2022: Coronavirus (COVID-19): summary of Scottish business support funding - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The International and European Relations budget of £33.3m for 2022-23 will be spent pursuing our engagement at home and internationally to enhance Scotland's reputation and increase economic success, prosperity and wellbeing, and promote Scotland as a great place to live, visit, work, study and do business. The Scottish Budget and supporting documents have been published on the Scottish Government website at https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2022-23/documents/ and a detailed breakdown of how this has been distributed across the various International and European Relations budget lines can be found in the Scottish Budget 2022-23 - Level 4 Data document (rows 71 to 89 on the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture tab).

Spending in future years will be considered and implemented through the Resource Spending Review and subsequent 2023-24 budget setting process