CREATIVE TAX RELIEF FOR MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES – SUPPORTING GREATER ADOPTION BY THE VISUAL ARTS SECTOR
YVAN in partnership with Contemporary Visual Art Networks in North East and North West, supported by Arts Council England, is working with a small cohort of organisations from each of the three northern regions to build understanding and capacity in the sector to maximise the benefit from a new form of state aid for visual art. Launched in April 2017, the Museum & Gallery Exhibitions Tax Relief (ETR) seeks to support galleries and museums to develop new exhibitions and display collections to a wider public audience.
The CVAN North partnership is collaborating with HMRC, HOME, RSM UK Tax and Museums Sheffield to support small and medium sized organisations in the North to develop applications to the MGETR scheme. The learning from preparing and submitting those applications will be shared with the wider sector, and through CVAN networks nationally, later in the year, to encourage the fullest take-up of the scheme from across the sector.
Launched by UK Government in April 2017, the Museum and Gallery Exhibition Tax Relief (ETR) scheme seeks to provide new investment into the museums and gallery sector to support the development of public exhibition and collections display. With the opportunity to reclaim monies on specified curatorial and organisational expenditure, it has been adopted by many of the larger arts and museum institutions achieving significant returns of unrestricted funding. ETR is one of a number of tax relief schemes available for the creative sectors including Theatre, Animation, Orchestra and Film which saw £1.2 billion paid out over the previous year.
From a recent survey, smaller organisations and museums remain unsure on issues of eligibility and charitable status, concerned that it will be difficult to make the claims with limited or no organisational capacity, nor able to make value-for-money assessments due to a lack of evidence of benefit.
To counteract this, YVAN as the Yorkshire wing of the Contemporary Visual Arts Network (CVAN), in collaboration with CVANs in the North East and North West, is running an action research programme with close partners HMRC’s Creative Industries Tax Policy Adviser and her team, HOME, Museums Sheffield and ten arts organisations and museums across the greater north. Through workshop and use of online tools, the group will test applicability, eligibility and benefit within their organisation and likely impact on the wider visual arts sector.
The NewBridge Project, Gateshead is part of the programme. Director Rebecca Huggan comments that, ‘The CVAN North pilot programme was really helpful for us in putting together our submission. We have now submitted an application to HMRC for £14,455, which if successful would be really fantastic for an organisation the size of NewBridge Project, and it took a lot less energy than writing a funding application!’.
YVAN is supporting medium to small scale organisations across the North to access Exhibition Tax Relief (ETR). This action learning programme has the real potential to bring ‘new money’ into the visual arts & museums sectors at a range of range, across the Northern regions and nationally via CVAN National programmes.
If you’re interested to find out more, contact: info@yvan.org.uk
More on the Museum & Gallery Exhibitions Tax Relief here >>
