Canelo / Arts Council England

Canelo / Arts Council England | 

9

 

Literature in the 21st Century: Understanding Models of Support for Literary Fiction

Arts Council England 

Funding for Literature

In the current funding period, from 2015 to 2018, Arts Council 

England will invest £45.6m of its total budget in literature. There are 

three main mechanisms for doing this: funding as part of the NPO 

(National Portfolio Organisations), whereby funding is committed over 

the whole period; Grants for the Arts, which tends to work on the 

basis of funding for specific projects; and strategic and discretionary 

funding beyond those programmes. The breakdown of funding 

over the period sees £20.2m go through the National Portfolio, 

£8.3m through the Grants for the Arts and £17.1m of strategic and 

discretionary funding. 

Within this funding envelope there is a great deal of diversity. At the 

smaller end writers are funded for projects they are pursuing. At the 

larger end there is, for example, an annual £5.4m grant to BookTrust 

for its Bookgifting programmes. In between lie a huge number of 

organisations and projects. These including writing development 

agencies such as New Writing North, Writing West Midlands, Spread 

the Word and Writers’ Centre Norwich, and organisations such as The 

Literary Consultancy, which helps develops writers’ work. 

Independent publishers are also supported by ACE. Examples include 

prize-winning poetry presses such as Carcanet, Bloodaxe and Peepal 

Tree Press, short story press Comma, and And Other Stories, whose 

primary focus is on literature in translation. There is also considerable 

support for organisations which support and promote reading, such 

as the above mentioned BookTrust, and The Reading Agency. In 

addition, ACE has launched a major programme to facilitate creative 

writing in schools. 

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