Creative business support and funding

Funding support for creative businesses

Guide

If you're starting or growing a creative business, there may be funding options available to help you achieve your goals.

Northern Ireland business support finder

You can use our business support finder database to search online for available sources of funding and support.

Invest Northern Ireland support

You can also explore funding options from Invest NI, including:

Northern Ireland Screen support

NI Screen offers various funding programmes across its economic, cultural and educational activities:

  • development funding- includes script, project and slate development for feature films, television and digital content 
  • production funding - comes in the form of a recoupable loan and assists in completing budgets on productions which are almost fully financed
  • short films schemes - aim to help emerging film makers
  • skills fund - is a grant offered to individuals working in the Northern Ireland screen sector to support their training or development needs
  • games funding - including project development and project production funding

Northern Ireland Screen also runs two cultural funds: the Irish Language Broadcast Fund and the Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund.

Explore Northern Ireland Screen support.

Arts Council NI

The Arts Council NI offers a broad range of funding opportunities for creative and arts organisations and individuals in Northern Ireland:

Find Arts Council NI support schemes.