Open Funding is one of Creative Scotland’s key funding routes, supporting the wide range of activity initiated by organisations, artists, writers, producers and other creative practitioners in Scotland.
We have separate strands for organisations and individuals, so they are not in competition with each other for funds. These strands have separate budgets and applications are considered at separate panels.
If you’re an individual artist, writer, producer or other creative practitioner based in Scotland, you can apply to the Open Fund for Individuals. Please note the temporary change to the Open Fund for Individuals decision timeline.
If you’re an organisation, you can apply to the National Lottery Open Fund for Organisations, or the National Lottery Extended Programme Fund.
Individual meetings
Please note that due to the unprecedented demand on the Open Funds at present, all Creative Scotland staff are fully focused on processing and assessing these applications. Individual meetings with officers to advise on future applications or give feedback on past applications are therefore not currently possible.
Temporary change to Open Fund for Individuals decision timeline
Creative Scotland is currently reviewing the process for our Open Fund for Individuals (OFFI) to identify where improvements can be made.
As part of this review, the lead time for award decisions has been temporarily extended by up to a maximum of 4 weeks (in most cases, a decision will be issued in a far shorter timescale), and applicants should consider this in any plans for their schedule of work related to their application.
Our review will include the decision-making process at application stage, terms of contract once a project is awarded funding, and subsequent project monitoring.
This does not affect any applicant whose funding contract has already been issued.
We aim to minimise impact on applicants as much as possible during this temporary review period.