Written question WQ84625

The Welsh Government has supported over 3,500 freelancers with £18m through the freelancer fund, as part of the overall Culture Recovery Fund. This support was unique to Wales and provided much needed financial support to the cultural and creative freelance community through the pandemic. The freelancer fund included a commitment to develop a public sector/freelancer pledge, which aims to improve the relationship between the public sector and cultural and creative freelancers. We continue to work with the freelancer community to deliver the pledge, and I will provide further detail on our approach in due course.

In addition, local authorities delivered the Covid Emergency Business Fund, where sole traders, freelancers and tax drivers could apply for £1,000 and businesses that employ people but do not pay business rates could apply for £2,000.

Alongside this, in December 2021, the Welsh Government launched a further £1m Barriers Grant fund, which is available until the end of March 2022, to support up to 500 unemployed people and young people not in education, employment or training to start their own business. The fund builds on the Start-up Barriers Grant, which supported 382 individuals disproportionately impacted by the Covid pandemic with investment to start a business in 2020/21. 60% of successful applicants were female, 12% were disabled people, 13% identified themselves as Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic, while 12% were young entrepreneurs. This discretionary grant provides financial assistance of up to £2,000 for 400 individuals who have faced barriers to starting up a business, and up to 100 young entrepreneurs.

Creative Wales continues to support creative freelances through funding mechanisms such as production and development funding, which help to provide an ongoing pipeline of work for freelancers operating the sector in Wales.

Activity undertaken by the Arts Council of Wales also provides a number of funding opportunities that support freelancers in Wales. These include Create, which funds the development and creation of high-quality arts experiences; the Four Nations International Fund, a pilot fund encouraging in-person, digital and hybrid collaboration between a range of partners across the UK and internationally; Connect, which supported the arts sector in Wales to develop, maintain and strengthen their links with key strategic partners in Europe and the International Opportunities Fund, which is supporting the development of relationships, collaborations and networks between Wales’ creative professionals and arts organisations and international partners.