Will the Minister provide a breakdown of business support expenditure for the following creative industry sectors: (i) television, film, video, radio and photography; (ii) IT, software and digital services in the creative sector; and (iii) the publishing industry?
A total of £12,207,000 has been committed to the Creative Wales budget for the financial year 2020/2021 to support the Creative Wales priority sector areas of Screen, Digital and Music. This budget also provides core funding to the Books Council of Wales to support the publishing industry in Wales. A proportion of this amount has been diverted to deliver Covid-19 emergency funds for Screen, Grassroots Music, Digital and Publishing. A further £548,000 has been made available for these emergency funds, providing a total of £1.39m for creative industries relief funds in Wales. In addition, funding is being made available to creative industries organisations and freelancers impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic through the Wales Cultural Recovery Fund (WCRF). Applications for WCRF support are currently being progressed to continue to support the sector through this difficult period.