ARTS organisations from across the region have been given a positive boost on the funding front.

Arts Council England is investing almost £12.5 million over four years from April 2018-22 in its Cumbrian national portfolio organisations securing funding for a dozen of the county's arts outfits.

The total figure is up 14 per cent on its last round of funding, which covered the three-year period from 2015-18.

Kendal's Brewery Arts Centre has secured £1,287,416, receiving £321,854 per year for four years.

Also receiving a funding thumbs up for the next four years are Grizedale Arts, £790,784; Carlisle's Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, £4,663,444; Penrith-based Eden Arts, £400,000, and Cumbria Theatre Trust, which runs Keswick's Theatre by the Lake, is in line for funding to the tune of £2,416,268. Barrow-based The Ashton Group Theatre will receive £321,976.

Two organisations join the ACE's national portfolio, which forms the backbone of the country’s arts and cultural infrastructure: artist led, Art Gene, from Barrow, is in the frame for £440,000, and Julie Tait's increasingly popular and ground-breaking, Lakes International Comic Art Festival, which is staged at Kendal in October, lands just short of a million at £936,000 for the four year period.

Also in Barrow, Octopus Collective, a music organisation that works with emerging artists to create sound installations and new forms of music, including the biennial Full of Noises Festival, will receive £280,928.

Carlisle's Prism Arts, also part of ACE's national portfolio, develops projects which enable disabled people, young people and older people to engage in the arts; Prism will receive £202,452 in the latest round of funding. Rosehill Arts Trust at Whitehaven will get £249,148.

For the first time, ACE will be funding museums as an integrated part of its national portfolio, and will continue to fund Cumbria Museums consortium, a partnership between Tullie House, Lakeland Arts and Grasmere's Wordsworth Trust. The funding will also go towards the contemporary visual arts and crafts programme delivered by Lakeland Arts.

There is more good news for Lakeland Arts Trust, which runs Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Blackwell, the Arts and Crafts House, at Bowness, and the Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry at Kendal; LA has also successfully applied to stage one of Arts Council England's large capital programme for £5 million to help refurbish Abbot Hall Art Gallery, one the UK's most important regional galleries.

Elsewhere at Lancaster, The Dukes Theatre will receive £1,024,760 and Ludus Dance, £382,576.

Another of ACE's national portfolio organisations, Morecambe-based More Music, will receive £105, 000 per year for four years.

Altogether, 230 organisations take a share of the the north of England's £414 million funding pot.

Jane Beardsworth, the Arts Council’s North director said that they were delighted to support the cultural sector in Cumbria. She added: "There is a wealth of creative talent, making and showing work for residents and visitors alike. Some of it responds to the unique Cumbrian landscape or to the concerns of local people in a creative response that resonates locally, nationally, and internationally. Our national portfolio is very competitive so we congratulate all the successful applicants and will continue to support other work in Cumbria through our other funding programmes".