What is the Bristol City Council Culture Fund?
This grant programme aims to make arts and culture accessible for all of Bristol’s citizens.
Bristol City Council wants to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in arts and culture for all Bristol’s citizens and invest in people, places and partnerships to respond creatively to need.
We will provide grants for Bristol-based artists, creative freelancers or organisations that clearly demonstrate one or more of the following. Applications addressing multiple priorities will be considered more strongly. The funding requested can be to support a project or to support your core activity.
Your project, activity or organisation should:
Address inequality
- Led by people from communities facing inequality and/or
- Designed to creatively benefit communities experiencing disadvantage, including barriers to access, opportunity, or positive life outcomes.
Be focussed on place
- Delivered in and meaningfully engages communities in Bristol City Council’s priority areas (see further information below on priority areas)
Promote health and wellbeing
- Supporting wellbeing and promoting physical or mental health through creativity.
Bristol City Council has a commitment to positive action on the climate and ecological emergencies. While this is not a requirement for this fund, we encourage projects/activities to meaningfully integrate environmental responsibility into their practice or outcomes.
Please note: We expect there to be high demand for this grant programme. We have limited funds available, so we expect to award approx. 30-35 grants this round. We aim to fully fund requests, but may occasionally award partial funding where a contribution would still be valuable.
What you can apply for
Funding towards arts and culture projects/events/festivals. This can be to continue something you are already doing, or for a new activity, testing new ideas, approaches and partnerships. Refer to guide for applicants for further information.
You can apply for 100% of the funding you need for the project, or you can combine it with other funding you have, or are applying for from other sources, to increase the scale of your project.
The funding should be fully spent between October 2026 and May 2027.
A grant can be towards any reasonable costs for your organisation or project, including:
- core or running costs
- project and activity costs
Who can apply
Applicants can be artists, creative freelancers or organisations based and working in the Bristol City Council local authority area. You can check your postcode here Find your local council – GOV.UK
We have a plain text version of the applications forms available for Individuals, and Organisations. Please note that you cannot use these paper forms to apply and applications must go through our online form. If you need adjustments to this process for accessibility reasons please contact us directly.
How to apply
Apply online using the link below. You can return to your online application form as many times as you like. However, please save the form as you go along. We encourage you to read the guide for applicants before applying.
Decision turnaround
We aim to tell you the decision in late September 2026.You can find out why we take some time to decide here.
