Culture & Business Scotland

Culture & Business Scotland is an independent Scottish charity dedicated to forging robust partnerships between cultural organisations and private sector businesses to enhance the sustainability, visibility, and impact of Scotland's arts, heritage, and cultural sectors. Guided by values of collaboration, innovation, professional development, sector advocacy, and mutual benefit, their philosophy champions culture's vital role in social cohesion, civic renewal, and economic vitality. They drive funding decisions through partnership-led change, believing transformative impact arises from mobilising business sponsorship to amplify cultural projects, build organisational resilience, and promote inclusive cultural participation for diverse communities.

They prioritise project funding for arts performance, visual arts exhibitions, local arts festivals, heritage events, museum initiatives, community theatre productions, heritage conservation, and historic building preservation projects that leverage business cash or in-kind sponsorship. Supported interventions foster creative innovation, broaden cultural access, and deliver community benefits including enhanced social connections, public engagement, and local pride through participatory cultural experiences. They back not-for-profit cultural organisations delivering interventions like festival programming, heritage storytelling, artistic residencies, and community-led creative workshops addressing visibility gaps, funding shortfalls, and post-crisis recovery in the cultural sector. Emphasis lies on activities promoting cultural participation for general public audiences, local communities, families, and underserved groups via accessible arts and heritage programs that build skills, foster belonging, and drive measurable mutual gains in visibility and sustainability.

They exclude core operational costs, retrospective activities, standalone individual benefits without community reach, or projects lacking matched business sponsorship. Distinctive as Scotland's sole dedicated culture-business connector, they prioritise cultural organisations with partnership capacity, innovative funding models, and whole-sector approaches integrating training in sponsorship, marketing, governance, and networking. Unique focus on advocacy for culture's economic and civic value differentiates them, favouring grassroots cultural entities serving diverse local communities through collaborative, resilience-building arts and heritage initiatives.