The UK National Lottery – 5 Amazing Grants
Introduction: The UK National Lottery – 5 Amazing Grants
Once a week when you sit down, and tune into the National Lottery draw on TV, whilst clutching your newly bought lottery ticket, you can feel the buzz of excitement. And that’s not surprising considering that the prizes are beyond anyone’s wildest dreams with certainly life-changing sums of money that would open up a world of possibilities for you and your family. In some ways they can be viewed as the ultimate progressive jackpot lotteries. But with all the money raised by the best lottery to play, have you ever thought about where it all goes?
Well, the first half of all the money raised goes towards the prize money. After this, there’s tax to pay, as well as the running cost for the whole caboodle. This leaves around 30% of the total to go towards other causes. These are deemed good causes and essentially these are projects that are financial with aid from the National Lottery Distribution fund (NLDF). This fund is regularly boosted by unclaimed prizes and so far, since the beginning of 1994, has provided over £40 billion to good causes. Let’s have a look at some of them….
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UK National Lottery: Team GB
After the 1996 Olympics, Great Britain was at an all-time low. In fact, they finished below the likes of North Korea and Kazakhstan in 36 place in the medal table. They only had one gold medal to their name. It was certainly time for much-needed change. So for the 2000 Olympics, the team decided to reinvent themselves with a new identity calling themselves “Team GB”. They also benefited from £58.9 million of lottery money to help with training and the build-up towards the next Olympic Games. And the money seemed to work wonders. A leaner and more focused team managed an impressive tenth place and finished with 28 medals of which 11 were gold.
Jumping ahead, 4 years later at the 2004 Olympics, after continued funding from the National Lottery Fund, the total medal count was up to 30. Then in the Olympics of 2008, the athletes collectively scored 51 medals in a superb performance. At the London Olympics, 4 years later, they achieved third place and a haul of 65 medals. After this, the funding committee increased their investment to over £80 million a year running up to the 2016 games. Here Team GB created history by being the first team to up their number of medals after hosting the games themselves. In fact, they finished 2nd to the United States and considering what a complete shambles they were 20-years ago, are now an unrecognisable team.
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UK National Lottery: Coronavirus
With all governments around the world spending less and less on public healthcare, it’s no surprise that the coronavirus caught all health authorities off-guard. Within weeks many had run out of vital PPE equipment. In the UK, the National Lottery stepped in with a £50 million emergency fund. By August 2020, in an effort to deal with the trauma brought about by the outbreak, over 600 million was donated. Because so many heritage venues were also closed due to the virus and the need for social distancing, then the lottery-funded a new website called “Heritage From Home” where internet users could still access the best of UK culture.
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UK National Lottery: The Film Industry
National lottery news now says that since its inception in 1933, the British Film Institute (BFI) has played a large part in UK culture. Thanks to benefits from the lottery funds, which include investing in film production and distribution, as well as developing new projects, the UK movie industry has been able to produce some great movies which went on to be international hits. These include the wonderful Billy Elliot, Philomena, and The King’s Speech, which went on to win 4 Oscars. Because of coronavirus, the film production industry has been hit hard but thanks to Lottery funding things could have been a lot worse.
UK National Lottery: The National Trust
The National Trust strives to preserve British heritage landmarks which are of beauty or historical interest. Since its inception in 1895, nearly 1,740 square miles of land and over 500 castles, gardens, mansions and parks fall under the care of the National Trust and require continued investment. To help with this the National Lottery Heritage Fund was set up and in the 25 years following its inception in 1994, key projects have been restored including Heaton Park in Manchester, as well as the creation of the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea in Wales.
In Durham, the fund now finances the restoration of the beautiful Lumley Castle with the project receiving £12.4 million in lottery money to restore it back to its Georgian splendour.
UK National Lottery: Music
As any pop aficionado will tell, the UK has always had a vibrant and lively music industry that has influenced pop, rock, and classical music the world over. There are literally hundreds of genres in the British music scene today that rely a great deal on Lottery funding in order to remain above water.
The body in charge of funding to the artist, dance and music, is the UK Arts Council, which also spend considerable resources supporting budding new musicians. Thanks to these funds, artists are able to apply for grants towards buying musical equipment and also for free lessons. Music venues where the public can check out the latest talent also received lottery funding. An example would be the legendary Manchester venue, Band On The Wall, which received £1.4 million in 2019, which was funding necessary to secure the venue’s future and also allow it to expand through its “bigger and better” Stronger Project.
According to the latest lottery news, right now lottery funding provides the mainstay of money for the music industry which is suffering a huge downturn thanks to covid-19. With many venues closed and therefore the possibility of live music being almost non-existent due to social distancing, the extra funds help bands and musicians to survive. You can certainly see in the not too distant future that lottery money will be needed across more and more cultural events. remember to visit TheLotter, for all your lottery tickets.
Conclusion: The UK National Lottery – 5 Amazing Grants
So now you know where your hard-earned cash goes. Of course, having to pay tax on it is a little galling when the government could itself be helping many of the recipients of lottery money. In fact, it could be argued that all the lottery money should go towards prizes, as many of these other ventures that are supported through lottery funds, should in fact be given government help as a matter of course. But that’s a discussion for another day.
