29 Dec Our Year in 13 Funding Bids

Posted at 12:29h in The People's Palace of Possibility by

by Malaika Cunningham

As we near the end of the year, we are taking stock of where we are—without lingering too long and without reflecting too deeply, lest we fall into the abyss. Please throw some tinsel over that newspaper and hand me a Quality Street.

We could tell you about the artworks we made happen this year – like Common Threads (where we wove a front room on the Moor with bamboo rods, and bright wool and many hands); or The People’s Palace of Possibility (when we hosted meals and performances and wee radio station in a giant geodesic dome); and Pigeons & Peas (where we celebrated the stories and histories of the workers gardens of Sheffield, as well as pigeon fanciers’ stories). But you can read about them on other pages of our website.

Instead, on this dark December day, we’re going to talk about money. We wanted to be up front with our experiences with fundraising this year, as we’ve had a lot of conversations recently going something like this:

‘Yeah, we just got a no as well’

‘I’ve never known the funding landscape to be this hard’

‘I heard the percentages of success are under 10%’

‘I heard it’s like 5%’

‘We’ve had ten times the amount of demand on previous years’

So we thought we’d offer a list of all applications we’ve written this year, our successes and failures and some of the feedback we’ve gotten, as a way of offering some evidence to these conversations. A little financial snapshot of what it’s been like for a small, artist-led, project-funded arts organisation in the year 2024. This is not a list of all the work we did this year, some projects were ongoing, others were more directly funded by partners (not via open calls). But this is a record of the open calls and grants we went for (that I can remember) and how it went for us.

  1. Successful – Historic England – Everyday Heritage Grant – £19,663 for Of Pigeons & Peas. Technically we submitted this application in November 2023, but we did hear back in early 2024.
  2. Successful – Sheffield Creative Communities Programme – we asked for £29,000 and got £21,000 to create Common Threads. 

 

So far so good, right?… oh wait…

 

  1. Rejected – Baring Foundation – Arts 2024 – £48,000 for ‘The Nature of Change’ with Manor Castle Development Trust. Some feedback: “The main reason for rejecting an application has been because of the sheer number of applications that we received. There were 193 applications totaling just over £9m in requested funding. It is the highest demand we have ever had for an open round of arts funding. By increasing our funding as much as we could beyond the stated £1million for this round, we have managed to fund just over thirty applications. Ideally, we would have funded many others that had considerable merits, but we simply did not have the budget.”
  2. Rejected – Invisible Flock – Artist Residency 2024 – £3,800. “We received just short of 100 applications and we were blown away by the incredible scope, ideas and talent presented by every single applicant. We wish we were able to extend and open it further than our current capacity allows.”
  3. Rejected – Paul Hamlyn Foundation – Art Fund. £195,000 (over 3 years) for core costs and growing the company.
  4. Rejected – ArtCry – Arts-based Citizens Assemblies as part of The People’s Palace of Possibility in Doncaster – £1,500. “The panel was really interested in a Citizen’s Assembly which included a strong artistic element. Also that you are undertaking the activity in partnership with the council and that there is a clear link to influencing local policies. However, we didn’t feel that it was clear what the artwork would be and how that would connect to running the CA. As an art fund we are really focused on the art that will be made and the impact it could have so that is the key point for us.”
  5. Successful – Cultural Pipeline Fund – Feasibility study into an outdoor arts and permaculture forest in Sheffield. We asked for £24,200 and were awarded £11,700 (watch this space – this seed is growing into something exciting).
  6. Rejected – Arts Council England – Project Grant – £30,000 for The River Don project to work with OPUS & Sheffield Hallam University on a project about the rivers and citizenship. “We decided that your application was less strong than other applications we received. We noted: The application would benefit from further detail around audience and participant engagement plans with a particular consideration of how the applicant is working with partners to engage specific communities along the river. More information is needed in the partners table with regard to partners referenced in the wider application and their role in the project.”
  7. Rejected – Arts Council England – Resubmission of above application. “Our funds are limited, we decided to fund a mix of different applications that we viewed as most likely to make a difference. We know this will be disappointing news, and we recognise the time and effort you have taken to make your application… We receive a lot more applications than we can fund. This often means we must make difficult choices about what we fund.” 
  8. Rejected – Arts Council England – EoI for touring project, Project Grants – £76,000. A new performance piece based on The People’s Palace of Possibility archive. “We have now reviewed your Expression of Interest against the considerations outlined in our guidance. On balance, we would not recommend that you continue to make a full application for the project you outlined. Panel noted the proposal in the EOI, but felt it was underdeveloped in relation to Let’s Create and the programme’s aims.”
  9. Successful – British Council – Connections through Culture – £10,000 to work with Filipino creatives on a very new arts and research project about women land workers around the world.
  10. Rejected – Now Then Selby – Environment Residency – £9,000 commission to build a ship built from seeds and rubbish. “I’m afraid we are unable to offer specific feedback at this point in the selection process, but I think in essence, we loved your work and your proposal – but felt it wasn’t quite right for this particular project.”
  11. Rejected – curious directive – Residency – £1,000 for a bit of R&D for a new show. “We had 52 applications, and we only have 3 places available. We really appreciate your thoughtful application, and we hope this won’t put you off applying again in the future.”
  12. Pending… we have 2 funding applications that we’re currently waiting to hear back from. Together they amount to roughly £21,000 worth of project funding.

Including the pending applications, we’ve applied for about £500,000 for projects and organisational development, and received about £63,000 (still waiting on a couple). This is just the bids we wrote for The Bare Project – we all also wrote a bunch more for personal projects connected to The Bare Project’s work. Each of these applications takes hours of work. Often days of dreaming up plans, meeting potential partners, drafting the application and creating budgets, timelines, digging out the right proofs and accounts, and building ‘risk registers’. Like many arts companies, we don’t have core funding, the vast majority of this is unpaid work.

The sector is built on this labour. We have structured the flow of the money in the arts in a way which depends on artists and small arts companies working for free to write (often convoluted and longwinded) funding bids. Most of these applications stand very little chance of being funded. With a 30% success rate this year (4 out of 13 submissions) we actually did really well.

This blog aims to offer some evidence to throw on the pile of broken things and to offer a sense of solidarity with other artists facing this reality. However, as it’s Christmas and we want to avoid being too bleak, I want to end with a couple ideas for how this could be different. So, my wish list, in order of preference.

    • Universal Basic Income for artists. Maybe this sounds utopian, but they are doing it right now in Ireland.
    • Brief Expressions of Interest before writing full proposals, with stipends for those who are invited to develop full applications. We have had this from a couple funders and it is always so welcome—and means we are able to write a much more thoughtful application.
    • Fewer questions, with less rigidity on word counts. Please don’t tell me we didn’t give you enough detail on ‘who we would work with’ when you gave us 150 words to tell you about them. My favourite call-outs this year have been the ones who give you a page or two to tell you about the project.
    • Only ask us questions that you actually want to know the answer to and only open applications to the types of artists you actually want to hear from.
    • Funders that reply in a reasonable timespan. Taking 6 months to get back to us is wild – it means pencil throughout our diaries, making it difficult to confirm work and increasing our precarity even more.

There is room for hope here—all these things do already happen. So… we have some goals for 2025.

Photos by Tom Dixon and Adele Drummond.