To ask the Minister for Communities how much of the £29 million funding for arts will be distributed to people and organisations not already clients of the Arts Council for Northern Ireland.

The £29m package is not directed solely at the arts but will provide a much needed lifeline and significant boost across our culture, language, arts and heritage sectors, which have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

Given the breadth and depth of the need it is my intention that the programmes being created should be open to as wide as possible a range of individuals and organisations across these sectors, including those not currently in receipt of Arts Council funding.

The details of the new funding schemes will be announced in due course but until funding decisions have actually been taken it is impossible to say how much of the £29 million funding will be distributed to people and organisations not already clients of the Arts Council.

However, you may be interested to note that in the first round of funding released under the now £5.5m Creative Support Fund, which was first established by Minister Hargey and to which I allocated a further £4m, a third of the individual recipients and 21 of the 150 organisations that have so far received funding were not previous Arts Council funding recipients.