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Arts Council England project grant-key changes.

Arts Council England (ACE) have published some info about their project grant scheme opening. Here's a summary of key changes! (which will run until April 2021)

It says in the guidance they are particularly keen to support: - applications from individual creative practitioners (including time to think and plan) • research and development activity • organisational development activity • live activity that can be safely delivered within this period (rather than activity with a start date far in the future)  • activity that closely aligns with our Equality Objectives This is a slight change from before because there was no real mention of supporting individuals specifically. Organisational development activity could include things like make your theatre company more resilient / getting someone in to help you plan for the future. They have actually committed to make sure individuals are funded as much as organisations. They are also currently looking at ways to support individuals to write apps which they're yet to announce but a lot of relationship managers have started doing online sessions.

So keep an eye out for online webinars from your local cultural orgs! There will also be a different approach in answering the questions, ACE seem to recognise that our activity won't be the same as it used to be.  A few examples below:

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT "We know that public engagement, for example, is likely to involve smaller numbers of people for live activities at the moment, and/or a focus on engaging people through digital means." (So don't be afraid to be realistic about current engagement) "you might use this section to tell us how the work you’re proposing will mean you are better able to engage people with your work in the future" (You can also talk about the future, which might enable some people to do some longer-term planning)

MANAGEMENT " If an activity involves working with the public, you will need to have a plan in place to do this as safely as possible and manage risks effectively." (This means you should read the government COVID guidance - which we know is changing a lot) "We’ll ask everyone who is offered a grant in this period to confirm that they have an appropriate risk management plan in place" (This means you've got a document that says "If x happens, which is risky, then we'll do y".)

FINANCE "We have removed the requirement for a minimum 10 per cent match funding during this period." This is great but it's possible that some will still help the application, in-kind support like meetings with furloughed staff (consultancy) count towards this. If you want to get help from some furloughed staff check out the @ExchangeProjec and ask the staff member if they are happy to go down as in-kind support and what that "consultancy" would normally cost. You can also now apply as a public library which is great news. Turn around time will hopefully be under 6 weeks (under £15K) under 12 weeks (over £15K) so hopefully slightly quicker than before.

They have also refreshed the wording of some of the guidance so make sure you're reading the LATEST guidance. The main change is that they talk about their EQUALITY OBJECTIVES more so make sure you've read these. There's a link on the guidance document. One of the objectives is: "Improving access to creative and cultural activities to those from lower socio-economic backgrounds." which is great for us! The current strategy document for ACE is here: https://artscouncil.org.uk/letscreate This is the document that tells you what their priorities are, the document is REALLY LONG but there's a sort of summary on that link. It's always good to copy ACE language in your application.

The ACE phonelines are closed but you can still email them, in fact there's a question in the form that asks if you've spoken to anyone on the team so get their name if you speak to someone!

The Arts Council have also continued acccess suppoort which means ACE will pay someone to support you if you have an access requirement. The best way to organise this is to email the general email and tell them what you need, they'll put you in touch with the right person.

One of our lot @BoyAndPen is one of the @artsfundraising fellows this year and on Furlough part-time so happy to read + help within capacity. He also does access support work for disabled (usually neurodivergent / with epillepsy) applicants which ACE pay for so ask him.

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Statement

The art sector has seen a wave of redundancies and closures sweep across the country as a result of the government's slow response to the needs of our industry - we’ve also noticed that those highest paid in our field seem to be the most protected. As customer service, technical and operational roles are made redundant whilst commissioning is at a standstill, we’re seeing the workforce suffer, with many executives taking home six figure salaries. We want to recognise that despite us, working class folk, making up about 18.2% of the workforce we will be the most affected by confirmed and incoming redundancies. Some people have said redundancies are necessary for organisations to survive but we believe they are the result of a sector that favors capitalism over community. We encourage you all to recognise the pay imbalance behind this decision making - the institutions where executive teams are earning upward of £200K+ are the same institutions that regularly ask artists to work for free or for low pay - this must be addressed. In the past few days The Royal Opera House have been heavily scrutinised for announcing potential redundancies whilst the Musical Director receives a reported £750k salary. This disparity between the workforce and executive teams isn’t just in the London institutions - looking at the charity accounts of one regional theatre in the East of England - it’s CEO receives £200K+ salary. We believe the leaders of these organisations should not have willfully allowed themselves to be put on such financial pedestals. We believe this is a moment for monumental change in our sector - one that could protect jobs and not cut them should the wealth our work workforce generates be more evenly distributed. We are a collective of 32 members from across the UK - we stand in solidarity with our peers and colleagues affected by the decision making of those in power and will begin to set out our own roadmap to a better, fairer sector. In light of the recent cuts to jobs we will be creating activisms over the next three years, leading up to next NPO round in 2023 to uncover what we consider to be a continual abuse of power and misuse of public money, we will begin to lobby funders, institutions and unions to endorse a wage cap on publicly owned and/or subsidised buildings and organisations and push for tangible accountability.

Many Artistic Directors have been in post so long their salaries have crept up to astronomical levels - we will be explicitly asking the top fifteen funded organisations across the UK what their succession plan is, how it will be actioned and when. There is precedent in ACE funded organisations for executive teams to be given a time limit, and we would like to see this become mandatory going forward. We will also question the need for hierarchical pay structures - companies like SlungLow have demonstrated this with success - a flat pay structure where every worker is paid the national average salary for the UK. We will encourage our sector to follow suit. We, as a consortium of working class artists and makers continually feel unsupported by our unions - Trade Unions were born out of a movement to ensure working-class people were not exploited for their labour, some of the creative unions seem to have forgotten these roots. We will be pressuring the unions to recommit to this movement and lobby against abuses of power in our sector. It is time for transparency and radical honesty - we want organisations to face up to what they’ve built and take responsibility for changing it instead of hiding astronomical salaries, expense accounts and profit driving subsidiaries. This statement and this thinking should have been done by people on the largest salaries but in their failure to do so we have done it for them, we now expect them to take this up and build a new sector that does not forget its work force in favor for self-preservation. We, the Working Class Artist Group will advocate, activate and seek accountability for our working class siblings - onstage and off. Get your house into order, we’re watching you. You know where to find us.

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Our statement regarding the Working Class workforce of the arts https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-_JBEbrnaQj_IdDXUyniJnSrsfHoZA-B/view

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Who gets to imagine the future?

Programming theatre and performance can be hard, it’s a pretty delicate juggling act of creative and analytical/financial skills to make sure you’re balancing budgets as well as platforming art you and your audience believes in. Right now we’re seeing a rise in the amount of work being programmed that engages with ideas of class, I have no real statistics to prove this but it definitely seems like it. This could be for many reasons, it could be because talking about class in theatre copy is becoming more acceptable and therefore pre-existing work is more visible, it could just be because working class artists are often the experts on austerity and that’s what we’re facing now, it could just be because the middle-class dominated leadership of the industry suddenly feels worthy when they do this, 

Whatever the reason I think it’s great that all this work by and for working/under class people is being programmed but I have noticed a distinctive strand running through it all. Generally the shows being programmed are verbatim or in some way drawn from autobiographical experience. It’s really great that our real experiences are being performed but I also want to do some thinking about what this means. Verbatim work and autobiographical work is often work that explores the past, it explores things that have already happened and their affect on the present. It is work that often relives or re-creates the structures that have come to make the present moment what it is, for work about class this means it is often work that explores the structures that have created poverty or instability. This kind of work is hugely important because it allows working class artists to better understand the way society has influenced their lives and therefore we more equipped to rally against the system. However, similar to the cyclical nature of verbatim / autobiographical forms, poverty is often a cycle. A capitalist economy is focused on maintaining the status quo for those in lower socio-economic groups, it focuses on making sure that the poor stay poor because the circumstances in the past dictate that their present involves struggle. The struggle of one generation affects the options that are available to the next generation, the past restricts the present and people who have experienced poverty often understand this intrinsically. It is a cycle, or a system, and currently the structures of theatre programming arm to be largely mirroring this cycle, it is recreating the past for present audiences. 

So, although this work is being programmed and that’s great, it’s still working within a system which is recreating the conditions of poverty. Alan Lane put it in a tweet the other day when he said

Programming is not just about content, it’s about how you’re affecting the system of programming and platforming that goes on in the theatre industry. One thing I think theatre and other performance art forms are useful for is to be like a gym for your imagination, they can expand the ways in which an audience imagines the future might change.

There is content about class, but the system still means that the entire future is being imagined by middle-class and upper-class leaders predominantly while working-class work looks to the past. Whatever future is imagined, the machine of society will realise it into being, maintaining privilege relies on gatekeeping who gets to imagine the future. 

We of course need to understand the past and the conditions that created the present, but we also need to intervene in that cycle and imagine a different future for the machine to create. This is not for middle-class people, there’s enough people exercising their imagination, we want to imagine our own. 

Programmers, find a way to allow working-class artists to imagine the future and address the historic imbalance of who controls this. 

And working-class makers, break the fucking system with your imagination.  by Tom Ryalls (@BoyAndPen)

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Mr Frosty

There were only ever three books in our house. One was a giant, well thumbed, creased, stained and battered copy of An A to Z of Great Britain that sat underneath my Dad's seat in hired cars, posh motors loaned for driving holidays to Wales that lasted forever and not long enough. Sight seeing the places Dad was stationed, fear inducing trips to slate mines and one nighters in cheap B&B's with curtains that matched the bed spread - all in places I still can't pronounce. The other was an Oxford dictionary - pristine, bound and hard backed, with the density of a bible and the paper quality of school loo roll. The dictionary was only ever there to appease my constant questioning - dictionaries are for inquisitive children. If I had a question Dad would tell me to look it up - my reluctance was never measured, dyslexia wasn't a thing ...and even if it was it was a thing, it was a thing posh kids had. The third and final book was my favourite, our most collected as a family. A universal book that offered every answer. A book that was seasonally replenished with anticipation. One your neighbours asked if you'd seen the latest copy. A book that was used to barter your behaviour, that kept the window ajar on warm summer nights and one you read cover to cover before you were asked what you wanted for Christmas. The Argos Catalogue. Hours spent dreaming about the possibilities of possibilities. Circling 453/565 and hoping that blue biro could fool Mum into finally buying you a Mr Frosty so you could finally invite your friends in and give them a cup of dayglo ice that was no where near as brilliant as a Slush Puppy from the Newsagent. Saturday mornings spent highlighting the stuff you couldn't possibly live without but you knew was unlikely to get. This book offered us a space to dream of the unreachable at arms length. Where hearts are first broken and wishes first made ...until the next edition is published and you do find other things on other pages to set your heart upon.