Spend on Burns Night Celebrations: FOI release

Information requested

The total amount the Scottish Government has spent on Burns Night Celebrations for the following financial years 2019-20; 2020-21; 2021-22; 2022-23; 2023-24; 2024-25.

Response

The Scottish Government provided money for a coordinated programme of Burns Night celebrations through the previous Scotland's Winter Festivals fund (which ended in 2022) and the network of international offices, where these events supported trade and investment activity and the building of connections with government, business, diaspora groups and other organisations in host countries.

Please see the table below, which contains most of the information you have requested: 

Year	Winter Festivals	International Network	Total Spend
2019-2020	£103,300.00	£82,011.51	£185,011.52
2020-2021	£70,000.00	£37,966.62	£107,966.62
2021-2022	£0*	£22,137.80	£22,137.80
2022-2023	£0*	£61,650.75	£61,650.75
2023-2024	£0*	£87,093.00	£87,093.00
2024-2025	£0*	Information not currently held**	Information not currently held**

Please note, there is neither a specific team nor budget line attached to all the activities related to Burns Celebrations – either events celebrating Burns in general, his legacy or marketing/PR which makes use of Burns as one of a number of Scottish topics. As such, over the previous six years it is possible that there have been programmes, events and expenditure which, whilst involving Robert Burns, were not tracked specifically by the Scottish Government.

*Winter Festival Funding ended in 2022.

**While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The reason why we don't have the information is because the total spend on Burns Night Celebrations for financial year 2024-2025 has not been calculated yet.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.