Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has announced details of over 2,700 organisations being offered nearly £400 million in grants and loans to help the culture and heritage sector reopen and recover.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced that over 2,700 arts, culture, and heritage organisations across the country will be awarded funding in the second stage of the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund.

In Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire support through the Arts Council amounts to over £3.4 million, which is being awarded to 26 much loved arts and culture organisations across the area.

This funding will help to ensure they will recover from the pandemic, start to reopen and continue to serve their communities for years to come.

• Gloucester-based Strike a Light and Gloucester City Council Cultural Services, which oversees the Museum of Gloucester, Gloucester Guildhall and Blackfriars Priory

• Cheltenham Festivals, which will now be able to deliver a full programme of Festivals and outreach work in 2021, Cheltenham Playhouse, Gloucestershire Everyman and Cheltenham Trust

• In the Cotswolds the Corinium Museum, The Barn Theatre and Fretwork

• In South Gloucestershire, Circomedia and Aerospace Bristol will receive funding

• Stroud-based onsongmusic, Get Lost and Found, and Hawkwood College

• Tewkesbury, the much-loved The Roses Theatre

Glastonbury Festival will also receive £900,000 to help the festival continue in 2021, with two smaller events this year, as well as to carry the festival through to 2022.

Cheltenham Festivals Leadership Team said: “This second grant from the Culture Recovery Fund will ensure that Cheltenham Festivals can continue to create cultural experiences which bring joy, deepen curiosity, connect communities and inspire change.

"Without this crucial support from DCMS, Cheltenham Festivals would have struggled to survive the impact of the pandemic due to the loss of live events and box office receipts. Instead we were able to pivot all of our work in 2020 to digital, culminating in an award-winning hybrid Literature Festival in October which reached our largest ever audience.

"In 2021 we are now in a strong position to deliver a full programme of Festivals and outreach work and build on Cheltenham Festivals’ digital transformation."

“Thank you to Oliver Dowden CBE, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, to DMCS and to the Arts Council England for this incredible investment and confidence in Cheltenham Festivals and culture in the South West.”