Radar: Arts Council England Small Project Grants

So, you’re a performance maker or live artist who has worked on a few projects and you’re getting a sense of how money and support would enable you to do more. You’ve got a specific idea for a project, and you’re ready to take the step towards finding funding from Arts Council England. Now what?

We’re here to help. We’re offering a series of free workshops focusing on Arts Council England’s small projects grants (under £15,000). Each session will cover a different section of the application: quality, engagement, finance and management. You can book for one session, or all four.

Throughout the week, we’ll also go over frequently asked questions about the application process, and cover what we’ve learned over the years applying for this fund. You’ll get a chance to work in small groups to develop your project application and talk with Artsadmin producers Michael Norton and Cat Harrison about the challenges and barriers you might encounter as you apply. Their expertise is in projects that focus on contemporary performance, interdisciplinary art and participatory performance, so our examples and materials will focus on these areas. 

Session 1: Quality
In this first session, we’ll focus on describing who you are, and what it is you’d like to make. We’ll offer exercises on how to describe your work clearly (and stay within the character count) and look at how your project lines up with the values and priorities of the Arts Council. We’ll practice how to explain what you do and how to start the story that your application is telling, and what you might want to include in the supporting document. 

Session 2: Engagement
In the second session, we’ll think about who your work is for, what these audiences or participants will experience, and how you’ll make sure they find out about your project. We’ll cover frequently asked questions around engagement for projects at different stages, like how to talk about R&D proposals and what to do if you don’t know who your audience or participants are. 

Session 3: Finance
In this session, we’ll focus on all the money questions around Arts Council England’s small projects fund. We’ll offer some templates for a budget and demystify some of the financial jargon like income, in-kind, expenditure, contingency and overheads. We’ll also offer some tips on inputting amounts into the application portal. 

Session 4: Management
In this final session, we’ll focus on who your partners are, what you’ve done already, activity timelines and the evaluation. We’ll consider what exactly a ‘partner’ means, offer some tips on what to ask for from them, and what to do when your project doesn’t seem to have any. We’ll also give some attention to the evaluation, one of the most important (but often overlooked!) steps of the application.

This workshop is supported by The National Lottery Community Fund.