How should budgets be presented by organisations whose delivery of activity is not just in Scotland but across the UK or wider? Would Creative Scotland prefer the budget to be inclusive of only the Scottish activity or the whole activity?

In the budget section for Stage 1, we ask applicants to first give a figure for their overall/total expenditure for all activity for period 2025-28. Then, they should provide a figure for how much they’re applying to Multi-Year Funding for across the 3-year period.

Following that, they should provide a figure for what they’re seeking for Year 1 specifically. This may just be a third of the overall 3-year ask, but does allow for a different amount in Year 1 if required.

After that, we ask the applicant to fill out the standard income and expenditure tables for Year 1 – with topline information on the costs (both in and out) that they feel they’ll need to deliver their Multi-Year Funding work.

Stage 1 asks for the overall figure including UK & Scotland operations, but after that, the budget detail we want is about the work that this funding would be for (ie. the Scotland activity).

At Stage 2, we’ll ask them to supply a Business Plan – this may not be something which is bespoke to us or Scotland and, therefore, could cover UK-wide operations, but we’ll need them to present Scotland-specific detail so that this information can be assessed financially.