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Introduction

A budget is a plan showing how much your project will cost and how much money you need to complete it successfully.

It's an important tool for any artist planning a project, applying for funding or writing a business plan. This guide, originally written for a-n by The Cultural Enterprise Office in Glasgow, will show you how to create and manage a simple budget. 

Good practice

🎯 Key principle: a good budget helps you to organise your project and prevents you from losing money.

It lists everything you need to spend money on, and compares these costs with the amount of money you expect the project to bring in. 

⚠️ Important: don't be tempted to create budgets based on the cheapest possible costs. This won't make your funding applications more successful. 

In reality, you’re more likely to be funded based on: 

• The strength of your idea
• Your experience and track record 
• Accurate and well-researched estimated costs including fees that align with fair pay standards

Another common misconception is that once you’ve been awarded the funding, you can ‘creatively’ adjust your budget – for example, buying extra equipment that you didn’t apply for or reducing allocated fees for collaborators, producers, technical support, etc. If these changes are not required, this is poor planning and financial practice.

On the other hand, budgets should be flexible. Over the course of applying for funding, the cost of items may change. For example industry standard rates for artist fees may change; inflation may result in materials and other costs rising; venues may close requiring you to change to a venue with increased costs, etc. These changes will generally be covered through the contingency (see 'expenditure costs' below for more information on contingency). 

If you are awarded less funding than you have applied for, you may need to make your project smaller. In this case, funders will often accept reasonable adjustments to your project budget.

✅ Always make sure your budget is realistic and properly researched from the start. 

 Monitoring budgets

It’s important to review how well you work within a budget. Think honestly about your past projects. If you often overspend, ask yourself: 

• Are you buying equipment or materials unnecessarily?  
• Are you undervaluing your work or pricing yourself too low in relation to the time you spend on a project? 
• Are you falling behind schedule? Do you need a clearer timeline? 
• Are you wasting money? If so, how, where and why? 

 Balanced budgets

✅ This method can help you plan realistically. It takes time, but it’s worth doing. It helps you develop your idea without compromising quality, and strengthens future applications to funders. 

Budget headings

Budgets are usually divided into two parts: 

1. Expenditure (costs)

2. Income (money coming in)

Discipline specific costs

When building a budget, you will want to consider costs that are specific to your practice and discipline. These may include: 

Performance 

Venue hire for rehearsal and/or public presentation

Printmaking, photography, sculpture, ceramics

Membership or day rate for workshop facilities: print studio, processing facilities, foundry

Video and film

• Equipment hire to make work
• Collaborator fees including sound engineer and video editors

Balanced budgets

Budgets vary depending on the artist, organisation or project. The process of balancing a budget is not always straightforward. Many art workers are prompted to build a budget in two ways:

• At the beginning of a project. In this case, the budget will be formed at the full scale and scope of the ideal version of the project. The cost of the project will inform a fundraising strategy. A fundraising strategy is a plan for generating funds often from multiple sources (see 'income examples' above).
• To apply for funding. In this case, you will often build the project at a scale that fits the funding available through that grant programme. If, in the process of building the budget, you realise you require additional funding beyond what is available through the grant programme you are applying to, you will need to make a strategy for additional fundraising. In this case, you can include 'pending funding' in your income table. Pending funding will come from grants that you intend to apply for within the timeline of your project. 

✅ The key rule is to include all costs and match them against all expected income. If total income equals total expenditure, your budget is balanced. 

If you’re doing this for the first time, get advice from other artists, support organisations or funders. 

Exhibition budgets

If you are working with a publicly funded organisation, make sure that the artist’s fee (exhibition payment) appears as a separate line in the budget so it can’t be used for other costs. See our Exhibition payment guide for details. 

Business plans 

Budgets covering several years (usually 3–5 financial years) become part of a business plan. Planning income and costs over time can help you work more strategically and meet long-term goals. The King's Trust provides a useful template.

Last updated: April 2026