Music funding in the United Kingdom

UK music funding splits along a line that does not exist in Canada. On one side sit the arts councils — public bodies distributing government and National Lottery money, one per nation. On the other sit charitable and industry-backed funders, of which PRS Foundation is by far the largest for music specifically. A Canadian musician looking for the UK equivalent of FACTOR will not find one organisation that matches it; the closest thing is PRS Foundation, and the resemblance is partial.

This page covers the UK-wide funders. The four nations each have their own arts council with its own programmes, deadlines and eligibility rules, and those are listed separately as they are added.

PRS Foundation

PRS Foundation is the UK's largest funder of new music, and for most working musicians it is the first place to look. It is funded largely by PRS for Music and partners rather than directly by government, which makes it independent of the arts council system.

One eligibility rule governs everything they do, and it catches people out: they fund music creators, not performers. Their own wording is that they support songwriters, composers, and artists, bands, producers or performers who write their own music — and that they do not support performers who do not write their own music. A covers band, a session player, or an interpreter of other people's repertoire is looking in the wrong place, however good they are.

Two programmes carry most of the weight:

The Open Fund for Music Creators awards up to £5,000 toward creating, performing and promoting new music. It is open to creators at any career stage and in any genre, which makes it the broadest entry point in UK music funding. Applications close twice a year.

The PPL Momentum Music Fund awards £5,000–£15,000 to artists and bands trying to break through to the next level, and funds recording, touring and marketing. It is aimed at artists with some traction rather than absolute beginners, and it runs on a quarterly cycle — which means a missed deadline costs you three months rather than six.

Beyond those, PRS Foundation runs a set of more targeted programmes: the Composers' Fund, the Hitmaker Fund, Women Make Music, POWER UP, Beyond Borders, and the International Showcase Fund for artists invited to showcase abroad. There are also regional Momentum Accelerator strands running in Wales, Liverpool and Tees Valley. Deadlines for all of them are published on a single page that is worth bookmarking rather than trying to remember.

Youth Music

Youth Music distributes around £10 million a year, funding organisations in England, Scotland and Wales along with small grants to young creatives across the UK. If you are under 25, or you run a project that gets young people making music, it is a distinct pot from everything above and worth checking on its own terms.

What this page does not yet cover

The four arts councils — Arts Council England, Creative Scotland, Arts Council of Wales and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland — are not listed here yet. Between them they run the largest public funding programmes available to musicians in the UK, including project grants and individual development awards.

They are missing for a boring reason rather than an editorial one: this registry records a source URL and a verification date for every programme, and nothing goes on the page unless it was read from the funder's own site. Three of the four councils' sites could not be read automatically at the time of writing. Rather than publish figures from memory or from a third-party grants listicle — several of which are still advertising funds that closed years ago — they are left out until someone can check them properly.

In the meantime, go to the arts council for your nation directly. If you are in England, look for National Lottery Project Grants and Developing Your Creative Practice; the equivalents elsewhere are the open funds for individuals.

Before you apply anywhere

• Check the creator rule first. PRS Foundation funds people who write their own music. Establish that you qualify before spending an evening on a form.
• Work backwards from the deadline. Most of these funds are two to four rounds a year, and a strong application written in a week is rarer than people think.
• Fund a project, not a career. These are project grants. An application that describes an ambition rather than a specific plan with dates and costs will lose to one that does not.
• Apply to the arts council and the charitable funders. They are separate systems with separate money, and applying to one has no bearing on the other.
• Read the actual guidelines every round. Amounts and priorities change between rounds, and the figures on this page are a starting point, not the terms.