- Watch the recording and download the presentation
- See the additional questions we gave typed answers to (which aren't included in the recording).
Speakers
- Veda Harrison, Director of Creative, Confident Communities (Host)
- Alison Holdom, Funding Manager Lead – Creative, Confident Communities
- Rosa Sulley, Funding Manager Lead – Creative, Confident Communities
- Luna Dizon, Communications Manager (Q&A support)
Welcome and housekeeping
Veda Harrison
Morning everyone, and welcome to this pre-application, Q&A for Creative, Confident Communities. We're really pleased that so many of you could join us today, and I hope you find it useful. I'm Veda Harrison, Director of Creative, Confident Communities at Esmée. Today, we'll be sharing more detail about our Creative, Confident Communities strategic aim, its priorities, what we're looking for, and how we make decisions. And Luna will facilitate the Q&A section later on, my colleagues, Gillian, Larissa, Gillian, and Siân are also on hand in the background to help with the Q&A for accessibility. We have Nana and Altan who will be providing BSL interpretation and interpreting what is spoken live. Myself, my fellow panel speakers will now describe themselves and where they are. So I'm a Black woman with short afro hair, wearing glasses, and we're sat in the Esmée office library.
Rosa Sulley
Morning everyone I'm Rosa Sully. I'm a funding manager in the Creative, Confident Communities team. And I'm a short white woman with blonde hair and I'm wearing a red jumper.
Alison Holdom
Good morning everyone. I'm Alison Holdom. I'm also a funding manager in the Creative, Confident Communities team. And I'm a white woman with shoulder length fair hair and wearing a blue jumper.
Luna Dizon
Hi everyone. I'm Luna. I'm the Comms Manager at Esmée. I've got long black hair. I'm from Southeast Asia, and I am wearing a black jumpsuit with lots of flowers on.
Veda Harrison
Lovely, Thank you, Luna. Just a few details before we start. Just some practicalities. Live captioning is available for this session. There's a link in the chat if you'd like to see the captions in a separate window, you can also click the closed captions button at the bottom of this window to see them within zoom.
You can post questions at any point using the Q&A facility which you can find at the bottom of your screens. I encourage you to vote for questions submitted by another participant. If you'd really like to see that one answered. You can do this by clicking the thumbs up icon next to the question. We as mentioned, we also have our colleagues who will be typing questions in the Q&A. We'll try and answer as many questions as possible. And we'll try to answer questions that are uploaded, if there are any questions we miss, we will try to answer them afterwards. We'll also be using this to update our FAQ section on our website, and you may find the answer to your question already there. We're expecting lots of questions this morning, so please don't worry if you miss anything. We are recording the webinar, and we will share the transcript, with additional questions covered on our website in due course.
Okay, as I say, we're holding the pre-application webinars because we know that you want to ask us questions before submitting an expression of interest (EOI). We can't speak to you all individually. We've had over 450 people sign up to this one, so hopefully this is a good way to ensure that your questions are answered.
We really value honest feedback on whether it works for you, and we've made changes based on what we've heard from previous webinars. We'll be gathering feedback after this session, so please do tell us what you thought. We want to make the most of our time to answer questions. So we'll try and leave it our part to leaving time for all your questions, so we're aware that we are going to need to strike a tricky balance today. We want to be more transparent, but we want to be absolutely honest. We are not holding this webinar to encourage more applications. We know that need is rising in sectors we support, and we've been receiving more funding applications but still making the same number of grants. In particular, under Creative, Confident Communities, we receive the most expressions of interest. We know we need to do more to save people from spending precious time applying to us when it's unlikely we will fund their work.
We want to answer as many questions as possible today, as we've said, but we know the main question for many of you is, will Esmée fund my work? I am sorry, but I think the answer for many of you today will be no. We won't be able to give you one to one advice or feedback about your own organisation, but today we hope to give a clearer picture of what we are looking for, how we make decisions and how we use our application process to do this.
About Esmée
Veda Harrison
So as well as assessing and managing grants, our funding managers explore other ways we can be proactive in making progress towards our goals, such as commissioning research, convening, co-design and using our influence and also inviting applications for work. Our yearly grant budget is between £45 million and £50 million, and roughly, we make about 200 grants a year across all three of our strategic aims.
One thing we need to clarify is that Esmée has never been a high volume funder of small grassroots, service delivery, charities, you'll hear more about the strategic nature of what we're seeking to do throughout this webinar, which we hope will help you to better understand whether you should invest time in applying to us, or if your efforts might be better focused elsewhere. It's also important to note that neither are we a funder of last resort or core fund regional branches of national organisations to deliver their day to day work.
So this is our strategy. You can see all three of our strategic aims, and they are Our Natural World, A Fairer Future and Creative, Confident Communities. There we go. You can see that there. And then we'll focus on our Creative, Confident Communities strategy, which obviously is why we're all here to hear about today. So this slide has an image of our funding aims, impact, goals and priorities. We're just going to bring that up in a second. Yes, there we go. You can find details of our strategy, including a full text version for screen readers on the website. On the website, you can also find our full funding guidance and more information on each priority, including the outcomes we want to see. You can also see examples of work we have funded. I'm now going to hand over to my colleague, Alison.
Creative, Confident Communities funding
Alison Holdom
Thank you, Veda. So on the next slide, we've got some grants in numbers, and this relates to Creative, Confident Communities, the one we're here today to talk about. Now on average, we fund between 40 and 50 grants every year through Creative, Confident Communities. And that illustrates that we choose to focus our funding mostly on quite a relatively small number of grants, and they tend to be longer-term, core cost grants. The grant figures on this slide relate to 2023 only, and show that in 2023 we had a £14.5 million grant budget, and we made 46 grants. You can see that there's quite a difference between the numbers of grants in the different areas. The number of grants towards community driven enterprise and regeneration outcomes reflects the fact that this is a relatively new area of work for us, and we're still building the portfolio. The amount of funding in the outcomes in communities working together for change are clearly the largest, because in 2023 this included some very unusually large grants, a £3 million grant to LocalMotion, which runs for over 10 years, and is a collaboration with multiple funders working in six places across the country. And a £1.5 million grant over five years to Civic Power Fund for work with grassroots community organising. I'm going to hand over to my colleague Rosa for the next slide.
Rosa Sulley
Thanks, Alison. We'll just bring up the next slide. So what are we looking for in an application to Creative, Confident Communities. This slide details the six overarching themes that we would want to see in all work under this aim, and this slide is really important, so I'm going to go through each one of these in turn.
Firstly, it needs to put place first and meet the needs of local people in a place. We often use the term place-based. In your application, we would expect you to tell us about your place and the local context you are working in, and how your work responds to this. It is worth saying, as a UK wide funder, the geography of our grants is really important to us. We don't prioritise any regions, but we are mindful of a few things when we make our decisions to socio-economic need of a place, the local opportunities that our funding could add value to, and whether we have funded there before, as we are conscious that there are some places across the country that we haven't historically funded.
Secondly, the work should be community-led and collaborative. In your application, you should be able to demonstrate that you have strong connections and relationships to the communities that you are working with, and that the proposed work is not top down and consultative, but instead local communities are setting the agenda. We are also interested to see work that brings communities to the table as equal partners in ambitious partnerships with a range of stakeholders, such as charities and the public and private sectors.
Thirdly, the work should leave a positive legacy beyond the lifetime of the grant funding, particularly through building up capacity and resilience of communities.
We also want to see how the work prioritises equity, embedding principles of fairness and working directly to support communities who have historically not been represented. We know that this work might look different in different places, so we want you to tell us who is in your local community and what equity looks like for you in your place.
Creating long term change is about disrupting the structures in places that are no longer working for the benefits of communities. For example, the work might be testing an innovative new approach to an issue that could improve how a place operates for the future.
Lastly, the work should have scope to spread through a focus on learning, enabling others to take forward ideas and approaches themselves in their communities.
It's really important to say that given the high demand for our funding, we still won't be able to fund everything that meets all these criteria. So that gives you an overview of what we expect to see across all work in Creative, Confident Communities. But we will now go through each of the three priorities in a bit more detail to explain what we are looking for more specifically under each one. When you apply, you will need to pick a Creative, Confident Communities priority that most closely matches your work. So it's important to understand our more specific criteria as well as the six overarching points. So I'll now hand over to Veda.
Communities working together for change
Veda Harrison
Thank you, Rosa. So in this section, I'll be making reference to a number of keywords which you may not be familiar with, all of which may be found in our glossary, which is part of the funding guidance on our website.
Our first priority to talk about is communities working together for change. And there on the screen, you can see our three long term outcomes, and I'll go through each of those in detail. This priority is focused on how we want to support local people in communities to achieve collective, sustainable and long term change. This is work that is led by communities and centres their needs and aspirations. And challenges the ways of working that does not seek consider or seek to implement their priorities or views. You can see the three long term outcomes there, and I'll be providing a case study for each one. We don't expect applications to be meeting all of these long term outcomes, and we will happily consider work contributing to just one, but we do recognise, and I hope you'll see that they are very interlinked. When thinking about applying to this priority, as with our other two, you'll need to consider if your work meets the guidance for supporting CCC (Creative, Confident Communities), which Rosa has just referred to.
The first long term outcome is: local people coming together to determine equitable and aspirational visions of what they want their community to be. This is about how a diverse cross sector of local people come together to connect and explore the different views of their community, essentially who they are, what is happening in their communities, and what they want their community to be in the future. Without the ability, space or both to do this, communities struggle to identify what their priorities are and how they want their local community to work for all who live and work there. We're interested in organisations who can demonstrate a deep, longstanding commitment to their local communities and are helping them to seek priorities for the future.
An example here is People's Voice Media. People's Voice Media are more than just about collecting lived experience local stories, because they use this valuable insight to influence policy makers locally and campaign for local change. In supporting People's Voice Media, we were interested in how lived experience can inform service design without it being an extractive process. You can find out a bit more about People's Voice Media via a video on our website, as well as other case studies that relate to this outcome.
Our second outcome is: communities and their local corporate, cultural, public, voluntary and community sectors work better together to achieve collective change. Building on the first outcome, this second one is about how communities and those responsible for implementing change in their local area can build stronger and authentic partnerships. Here, we’re not just talking about local authorities or other devolved models of local governments, such as mayoral or combined authorities. It's about other organisations in the place, such as arts and cultural venues, those responsible for health and wellbeing, large and small businesses and corporations and local charities. Here, we're interested in how local institutions who are in a position to improve how well a local community functions, and also acknowledge that how they currently operate may be the barrier to change, are willing to share their power and resources and work in genuine partnership with local people. A key point here is that we will not fund work that is the responsibility of statutory provision. Organisations seeking funding will need to show how they are contributing their own resources to this work and are able to sustain the benefits for communities of any funded work long term.
And the example I'm highlighting here, which is the video that we saw earlier, is from a campaign group called We're Right Here, and this is led by local community leaders and champions from across England who are working with local and national government towards a Community Power Act. This Act will mean that local people and organisations will have more power over what happens in their area. Our support for We're Right Here is to ensure that a more diverse group of community champions are recruited and leading change, and also supporting the national campaign and advocacy. Again, you've seen the video. If you want to watch it again, you can see it on our website.
And finally, under this priority, our third outcome is: local people are able to exert more influence over the decisions that affect their lives and are the drivers of change. This is similar to the second outcome, but focuses on how decisions are made in a local place, and how this decision-making process can be adapted or changed to make sure that as many local people who want to take part in making decisions are able to do so. We're interested in organisations who want to build the skills and capacity of local people in order for them to participate, but also are able to imagine what alternatives to local decision-making and change might be.
An example here is an organisation called Community Organisers, who are key to helping local people organised to influence change. Their work is primarily in low-income neighborhoods, often with local people who don't see themselves as influencing change, and they train them in how to make change happen at both a local and a national level. Community Organisers are a well regarded national organisation with experience of supporting community organising hubs. And with support from us, they plan to work with partners to better understand the common issues faced by communities across England. So that concludes our first priority, communities working together for change. I'm now going to hand over to Rosa again, who will take you through community driven enterprise and regeneration, priority and outcomes.
Community driven enterprise and regeneration
Rosa Sulley
Thanks Veda. So our second priority is focused on creating a local economy that works better for communities in order to address some of the long standing inequalities that we see across the UK. We believe that this can be achieved by supporting people to have a stronger stake in the processes of economic development and regeneration happening where they live. We have three long term outcomes under this priority, which I'll talk through in turn. We don't expect applicants to be meeting all of these long-term outcomes, like the first one, but we will happily consider work contributing to just one. We do recognise, though, that they are very interlinked. For each outcome, I'll give a case study example and explain how it meets our guidance. As a reminder, we are also always still looking for those six key points that I talked through at the beginning of the presentation in work that we fund.
So the first outcome is: an increase in community owned assets and community wealth building models drives greater reinvestment in local economies, reducing economic inequality. This is about enabling communities to disrupt traditional approaches to economic development, for example, by purchasing assets themselves, or keeping money, like keeping money in a local area through local supply chains or local jobs. This might look different in different places depending on local context. We know that there can be lots of challenges to achieving this. So work funded under this outcome will likely be building capacity and confidence of communities, and helping them to overcome barriers through things like peer support networks, specialist advice, or access to finance. We are particularly interested in work that is safeguarding social infrastructure and/or enabling historically marginalised communities to own assets.
An example that I want to highlight here is Community Land Scotland. As an infrastructure organisation, they support diverse community groups at all stages of the asset ownership journey and work collaboratively with strategic partners across the voluntary and public sectors in Scotland. They advocate on behalf of communities and ensure real voices and experiences are influencing land reform legislation. Our funding is supporting staff roles in Community Land Scotland's policy team, as well as contributing to research and organisational overheads. You can read more about this example on our website.
The second outcome is: community-led enterprises are a proven and widely adopted model that underpin fair and local economies. Now, by the term community-led enterprise, we don't just mean a social enterprise, we mean an enterprise that is strongly connected to its local community and is primarily focused on delivering the impact in the place where it operates. We often see collective or democratic governance models embedded in these types of organisations. There will likely be a lot of overlap with the first outcome, as we know that community-led enterprises often also run local assets. However, what we are really interested in under this outcome is how we can support the community-led enterprise sector to become more established, to scale and to be more resilient for the future. So this could be about making the sector more diverse and inclusive, testing models of alternative finance, or helping to demonstrate the value of the sector to wider audiences. Given this focus, we want to stress that it is unlikely that we would fund a single social enterprise on its own, as we would need to see strong evidence of the impact of the work on the wider sector to be able to consider it.
So the example that we're highlighting here is Kindred. Kindred aims to grow the community-led enterprise sector in the Liverpool City region. It is both a peer support network and a lender providing access to no interest loans for local enterprises who can demonstrate strong social impact. Kindred was of particular interest to us because of its place-based approach. For example, it works in close partnership with Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and because of its governance structure, it is a membership organisation owned and run by and for its community. There was also strong alignment with our social investment priorities.
The final outcome under this priority is: community-led approaches to the local economy positively contribute to nature and climate. This is a newer area of focus for the Creative, Confident Communities funding, and is really focused on how economic development interlinks with climate change. Our focus is quite specific under this outcome, and we are mainly wanting to support work that fits against one of these two areas, either work that is piloting emerging and alternative models of economic development, focused on the environment. This could be deploying concepts like circular economy or doughnut economics, but it doesn't have to be. Whatever concepts are being explored; it should still always be community-led. Or we want to support deep work at the grassroots level to build knowledge, trust and consensus in communities around climate change. We know that this has, in some communities, become a divisive and difficult topic, and we want to resource work that is focused on inclusive and collective action across both of these areas. We are particularly interested in work that is led by or engaging with communities who aren't typically represented in climate action, or who may feel like climate change as a topic isn't for them.
Our example here is Northern Roots, a project creating the UK's largest urban farm and eco park in the heart of Oldham's diverse communities. The regeneration plans include major nature restoration works as well as new spaces for local small businesses and social connection. Local people have been involved at every stage of the process, co-producing a vision for change in their community, which simultaneously delivers positive outcomes for local people and for the planet. You can read more about this example on our website. I'll now hand over to Alison, who will take you through our last priority.
Community-led art and creativity
Alison Holdom
Thanks, Rosa. I'm going to be talking about our priority for 'Community-led culture and creativity'. These long-term outcomes continue Esmée Fairbairn's journey towards supporting culture and creativity with and for local communities, and as a force for making change. They're based on our belief that culture and creativity are intrinsic to how we understand and express values, experiences, meaning and hope for the future. The priority aims to support, develop and share the impact of culture and creativity in strengthening community relationships and bringing people together, with a focus on long-term community impact. We've chosen in particular to focus on community co-creation and co-leadership. I know there are many ways of defining co-creation in arts and culture. What we understand it to mean is creative work done in collaboration, either collaboration of community members or partnerships between arts professionals and communities, but always with shared decision-making, shared goals and without a hierarchy. For us, the benefits of co-creative arts programmes rest both in the artwork and the wider impact, because we find this approach usually leads to strengthened relationships and community connections, and can shift agency and power. Funding can support projects or programmes when they are part of a long-term way of working involving sustained relationships and a plan for long-term impact. But we will not, through this priority, be able to support short-term one-off projects. Most of the grants we make will be supporting core and unrestricted costs.
Please note as well that unlike the other two priorities, if you're applying through this priority, you need to contribute to both the first AND second outcome, if you're applying to either of those outcomes. If you're applying to the third outcome, which is about cultural strategies and wider impact, you need to match all three of these outcomes, which is different to the other two priorities.
So if we go to the first of the outcomes, this is: local people and local artists need creative and cultural activity in their communities. This outcome focuses quite clearly on both local people and local artists. So we will be supporting work through community organisations and through cultural or arts organisations, both those working with professional artists and those developing everyday creativity. However, we will only be able to fund organisations that can evidence and have significant ambitions to co-create and co-lead with communities. The grants made through this outcome will not be about outreach or extending participation, but will support ways to enable community leadership of its own, their own creativity and culture. And grants made through this outcome will focus on organisations that share and disseminate learning about the impact of their work. We expect to fund work that enables community-led organisations to evidence the change they're making and how that change addresses barriers to engagement and representation the. We are, however, reliant on you to tell us about the specific geographic context where you work. Any expression of interest or proposal speaking to this outcome will need to explain how your work is representative of the diversity of those communities.
One strong example of funding towards this outcome will be Back to Ours. Building on the legacy of the whole city of culture, Back to Ours, are rooted in neighborhoods and involve local people as audiences, participants, creators and commissioners. Their creative programme is co-produced with several community programming hubs made up of local people. They work together to develop the programme and commission and promote events and activities in the places people know and love in and around their area. More information about that is available on our website, and you can find that through the link in the chat.
The next slide is the second outcome in this area: a collaborative approach to creativity and culture enables people to work together to strengthen their community. We're interested in understanding more about the benefits of collaboration when working with community creativity and culture. This can be collaboration locally between same sector or cross sector organisations who bring their collective skills and experience together to act for change. It can also be regional or national programmes that use a network approach to make work that is embedded locally but shared widely. What we need to understand is, what is the benefit to the communities involved of working in a collaborative way, what more can be achieved, and how can impact be better shared and sustained through these partnerships and collaborations. We're also interested in how this approach enables smaller groups with fewer resources to build connections, and potentially how collaboration can ease the pressure on competition for funding.
A good example of this outcome is Create Gloucestershire. It's a network of people and organisations from across the arts and cultural sectors working with a range of strategic partners, for example, GPs, job centres, local authorities. They test and share ideas to encourage arts to become every day in Gloucestershire. Their multiple member and multiple partner approach enables them to be agile and flexible using different routes and different partners to find the best results for their communities.
And the third and final outcome is: local and regional cultural strategies are shaped by citizens and impact wider decision-making and agendas for change. Through this outcome, we aim to fund organisations and programmes that shape and inform local cultural strategies, but also have an impact on wider decision-making and agendas for change across the whole of a community's experience. We also want this funding to help to build an understanding of the importance of culture and creative activity in community building and resilience. So some grants will focus specifically on cultural strategies and resources, while some grants will focus on the use of culture and creativity for work on other local strategies or engagement with wider decision-makers and policy-makers.
An example in this priority would outcome, sorry, would be Citizens in Power. They work with communities, local authorities and third sector organisations to co-design ways for communities to lead decision-making and shape the future. They use the citizens assembly model to enable local people to make decisions about creative and cultural resources and how they are deployed. Our funding is supporting them to build a network of organisations working in this way so their funding overlaps also with that previous long-term outcome around collaboration.
There's one point I want to add about the funding towards community-led art and creativity, which is something we've been asked in previous webinars. In general, across all our funding, we consider the basic function of schooling and the curriculum to be a statutory responsibility and one that our funding shouldn't be replacing. However, we know that a lot of the work that would be eligible for funding under this priority will include work in schools, and so we will consider proposals that include activity in schools, but only where that approach is part of a wider engagement plan. For example, a programme with multiple routes for community co-creation, only one of which takes place in schools, but we will continue not to support work that is only taking place in schools or working as part of the curriculum, and I'll now, I'll hand back to Luna.
How to apply and how we make decisions
Luna Dizon
Thanks, Al. So we're now just going to play a short video with the six steps on how to apply, and also give the panel a little bit of a break as well.
VIDEO
There are six steps to apply. One, take a quiz to check you meet the minimum eligibility criteria. You'll be asked quick questions on the funding you're seeking and your organisation. The quiz takes a few minutes.
Two, read our funding guidance. It has three sections. A, more detail on how to apply. B, what we do and don't support. And C, our strategy and funding priorities. Sections A and B take 30 minutes to read. For C, our strategy, read the parts relevant to your work. You'll find information on the outcomes we are focusing our support on.
Three. If you think Esmée is a good fit for your work, submit an expression of interest. Use this to tell us briefly what work you would like us to support, about the change your focused on achieving, and how your organisation is well placed to deliver it. You'll have 300 words. We'll also look at your website to learn more about your organisation and work. You'll hear from us within four weeks to let you know whether we'll take your application further.
Four, if your work is a potential match, we'll invite you for a conversation to learn more. The conversation will cover fit to our strategy, your approach and your track record.
Five, if your plans are a strong fit, we invite you to submit a proposal. You'll have three months to submit a proposal. If you already have a document that describes your work, and shows how your work aligns with our strategy, you can use this.
Six, after receiving your proposal, we'll invite you for a follow up conversation. We'll then do a detailed assessment of your application. We aim to give you a decision within three months of receiving your proposal.
Rosa Sulley
I'm going to talk a bit about what happens behind the scenes. So we use the expression of interest (EOI) stage as a basic screening process, and we are checking a few things, firstly, that an organisation meets our minimum eligibility criteria; secondly, that the work is a good fit for our funding priorities; and thirdly, that the work is leading the way, driving change for the future and aiming to make a lasting difference. As the film outlined, at this stage, we will also check an organisation's website and other publicly available information. For example, what is on the Charity Commission or Companies House. But all of those that look like a really good potential match we'll invite you for a phone call, which is a chance for us to explore the application further together. It also gives the organisation applying to us the opportunity to ask us any questions. Because of the volume of applications at the moment in Creative, Confident Communities, we are taking a bit longer than the video stated, so we are aiming to get back to everyone within six weeks. We discuss all expressions of interest within our team internally to decide which ones we want to invite for Proposal. I'll now pass to Veda, who will talk briefly about what we consider when making decisions and diversity, equity and inclusion.
Veda Harrison
Thank you, Rosa. And as you all understand that part of making decisions that we do have to make judgments about the work that actually is part and parcel of an expression of interest. So if you're submitting an expression of interest to Esmée, what you're actually doing is putting that work on our radar and letting us know that you think it fits our strategy. But when we look at expressions of interest, we're also looking at these things from our point of view in the context of our strategy. So these are some of the things that when we're making decisions we consider. We'll, look at your track record, look at your successes, what you've learned and when things didn't go to plan. We're looking at your connections. How does this work link and complement other work we support across our strategy, and does it increase the combined impact?
Fourthly, we also look at the broader context. What are the opportunities and the barriers? Who your allies and collaborators, what influence and leverage will the work have? And then finally, the difference our support can make to the work that you're proposing. Will it add value and will it provide extra support in adding to the work that you actually do?
One thing that's really important for us as a national funder, as with our peers, is diversity, equity and inclusion, and we call it DEI for short. As part of our application process, we'll be asking applicants for the following information. We're committed to understanding and tracking, improving and sharing our progress on DEI. For some areas our strategy, we are prioritising applications from organisations led by people with lived experience of the issues. Across all areas of our work, we commit to funding more organisations led by communities experiencing racial inequity. We know that our eligibility criteria can be an unfair barrier for organisations that are led by communities experiencing racial inequity and disability organisations, we are exploring how best to tackle racial inequity through our New Connections funding, which is a pilot. And you can find out more about this pilot programme of funding on our website.
Based on DEI data we gather about who our funding is reaching, last year, nearly half of the grants that we made went to organisations led by people who face structural inequity as a result of their identity or experience. You can find more about this data we gathered in a recent story on our website, and Luna has shared the link about this in the chat.
From a Creative, Confident Communities perspective, we are also interested in work that reflects and engages diverse communities in a place, as well as work that demonstrates how diversity, equity and inclusion runs through all you do and how you work. We're really interested in work that shows an understanding of who is in your local area, who is represented in your proposed work, and who is not. And what the approach that is responsive to both of those issues. And you can see the link in our chat more on the DEI. Over to you, Alison.
Alison Holdom
Thank you. On the next slide, we will be looking at applications that come through our website. To start with, we want to be upfront with you about the very high numbers of applications we received and the competition for our funding. We understand that these high figures are due to the rising levels of need. On this slide, you can see stats for applications received through our website as expressions of interest. These numbers don't include applications that we have proactively invited or applications for continued funding for organisations we currently support. These are just people who've applied through our website uninvited.
On the left, you can see the figures for all the expressions of interest received in 2023 across all our funding priorities. And as you can see, unfortunately, we're able to invite only a very few of these expressions of interest to full proposal. We focus on the ones we think are the strongest fit to what we're looking for and to our long-term outcomes. You can see there that of the 1030 expressions of interest, only 7% were invited to full proposal.
On the right-hand side are the figures for expressions of interests that were specific to Creative, Confident Communities. And again, these are ones that were not invited, the ones that were invited are not included, and ones from organisations currently funded are not included. This demonstrates, again, the very high level of demand, particularly for Creative, Confident Communities funding, and that almost half of all expressions of interest received were for that funding. And of the 472 expressions of interest received, only 4% were invited to proposal. We're really conscious of how much effort it takes to submit an application, so we try to make that expression of interest (EOI) stage as light touch as possible. We do know that for EOIs, expressions of interest that we invite, success rates are higher. In 2023 we made 46 grants in Creative, Confident Communities, and 30 of those were for applications, either invited or for follow-on grants. And we're mindful of bias here, and we make sure that we ask the same questions and use the same assessment process for expressions of interest we invite and those we don't.
So on to the next slide, bearing those success rates in mind. The question we're often asked is, well, how do we get onto your radar? There are two ways that we learn about organisations work. As a funder, we are trying to be more proactive in seeking out work that we think can contribute to our goals. For example, we attend sector and community events. Although we are a UK-wide funder and a relatively small team, so there's a limit to how much we can do with that. We also, however, carry out research into our areas of work. We follow up on recommendations from people we fund or people we work with.
The other way we learn about an organisation's work is through that open expression of interest process on our website. It's the most straightforward way of telling us about your work, and if we don't think your work is a strong fit for our strategy, we can let you know directly.
We have increased the support we're giving to organisations that we haven't funded before, as Veda mentioned earlier. And in fact, in the Creative, Confident Communities strand, we made 16 grants in 2023 through the open process. Of these, 12 grants, or 75%, were for organisations new to Esmée Fairbairn. So although the competition for expression of interest is extremely high, that route can result in grants to organisations that are new to us. If the work is a strong match with our funding outcomes. I'm going to pass back to Rosa.
Rosa Sulley
Thanks. Al. The next slide talks a little bit about what we don't fund. This slide details the areas we don't fund and our exclusions because of our focus on long term grants for work with a more strategic focus, we don't fund very small organisations, by which we mean, with a turnover of less than £100,000, or without well established governance. I'm not going to go through all of these exclusions in detail, because there's a lot on that slide, but you can see the full list on our website, and you will have access to the slides afterwards, where you'll be able to read this in more detail.
Expression of Interest tips
Rosa Sulley
We often get asked what makes a good expression of interest? And I think there's actually been a question asking that in the chat. So here's an example from Participate Projects in Bradford who kindly let us share it. Their application was for work towards our community-led enterprise outcome. This was an uninvited expression of interest that came through our website from someone we had not funded before, and we didn't know. I won't read the expression of interest out in full, but I did want to highlight why we thought it was a good expression of interest. And you can spend more time reading this example when you get the slides.
So here are some tips. Be clear about what you're asking for funding for this could just be a line or two, like in the example on the previous slide. Remember that we also look at your website. This helps us to understand more about your organisation and track record. So you use the expression of interest to focus on your work in relation to our strategy. The example itself gives a strong sense of what they're aiming for, and shows an understanding of what change will feel like and how they'll get there, including why the work is needed in that specific place and how this builds on previous work. It shows a good balance of who they are as an organisation, what they're trying to do, and the people and partnerships that will be involved. It is clear that the local community will be at the heart of the change, and there are clear links to our priorities in Creative, Confident Communities. They also give brief descriptions of the activities and also talk about the broad assistance and long-term changes that they're seeking. So I'll hand that to Veda.
Q&A - questions are in bold
Veda Harrison
You'll be glad to know that we're now reaching the Q&A session of the of the webinar. But before we do, I just want to address a couple of questions that we've received in advance, and hopefully that person has posted it in the chat for people to see. We've heard these questions that are talking about communities of identity in the place. It's really important for those considering applying to Creative, Confident Communities to understand the six areas that Rosa identified at the top of the webinar, which is that place is first and foremost a key underpinning aspect to Creative, Confident Communities. However, we know that communities of identity exist in places and are often leading the work of change in their local communities. To be aligned to the strategy, we're looking for organisations who, whether a community of identity or issue, are clearly able to strongly articulate how their work will have a strategic impact on the place and for all who live there. And when we talk about this, we are talking about communities in terms of geography, not virtual community. Because I could see there was a question in the chat about virtual communities as well. We are talking about geography here. And Rosa, you have an example, a really helpful example, that kind of answers some of the questions that we've been getting about communities of identity?
Rosa Sulley
Yeah, exactly. So we know an organisation working specifically with low-income women in neighborhoods experiencing deprivation in a city in the UK. They are an organisation led by and for women, and they have a specific focus on that community of identity, on building the financial resilience and confidence of marginalised women in poverty, including migrants, carers and social housing tenants. However, embedded into the vision and theory of change of the organisation is an ambition for wider neighborhood and city-wide impact for all communities. As a result of their work and their approach, they have seen how building resilience and confidence at an individual level amongst low income women leads to stronger voices, empowerment and collective action at a neighborhood level on the issues most important to local communities, such as tenant rights and social housing, or about local regeneration projects. This, in turn, with support, has resulted in community organising and advocacy at a city-wide scale, and has fed into some city-wide policy changes on these topics. So we understand the importance and the need for safe and focused spaces to enable specific communities of identity to come together, but under the Creative, Confident Communities strategy, specifically, we are interested in how this can then lead to wider place-based change that benefits all communities.
Veda Harrison
Yeah, thank you, Rosa, so over to you, Luna for questions.
Luna Dizon
So we're just gonna start with another question that came in advance. This one came from Anna. So they've asked if testing a model that we hope could be used in many different locations, would you be more interested in a proposal where it ran in three very different geographical locations or focused on a very specific region?
Veda Harrison
I'll take that one, I think here again, focusing on the place aspect. If an organisation has examples of where work is very reflective of the different kind of geographies and kind of aspects of of places, that's absolutely fine. Equally, if they want to focus in one specific area, that's okay, as well. As we've said throughout the webinar, which I hope you've picked up, what's really important for all this work is the relationships that organisations have with their communities, and the work that is kind of grassroots, bottom up, that is not top down and consultative, as Rosa mentioned earlier. So in terms of geography, working across areas, we do recognise that, you know, places are very different. And there's also a question about, you know, scope to spread that we've referred to earlier, we do recognise that, you know, it's not a one size fits all approach. So what works in one place and community won't automatically work in another. And when we talk about scope to spread, it's the idea of the particular work that could be adapted, that could work somewhere else and also in another place, but also influence national policy. I hope that answers the question.
Luna Dizon
And just on that scope to spread, I don't know if there's any more that you want to add to this question around whether this need for spread needs to be across other communities, for example, national impact, or if it can be more local.
Veda Harrison
I would say both. If there's an opportunity to do both, obviously the work is going to be very embedded in a place. And obviously, you know, the work and the impact on local communities is what you're seeking to do if there is an opportunity. We talk about learning, we're a learning organisation, and obviously how one particular initiative in one place could actually impact another is really, really important somewhere else. So it's both, and I know that, you know, it's not a sitting on the fence response. It is both. It's the opportunity to really impact a place long-term and sustainably, but also an opportunity to share that learning with others who may want to pick it up and actually adapt it for their particular place.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. I'm going to go to Ben's question next, which is about how we collaborate and work with other funders who might cover the same kinds of issues that we do. So I won't read the full question out but they say, how are Esmée working with other funders to mitigate overlap and allow a wider range of organisations to be funded, and particularly at a time of increased inflation and further loss of unrestricted art funding.
Veda Harrison
I think we'll probably take both of these in terms of the arts aspect. So we do work very closely with our peers. We do know that the National Lottery has recently launched their fund on communities, and it is, I would say, complimentary rather than duplication. And I think that's an important aspect, that as funders, we are aware that, you know, as a funding community of trusts and foundations and organisations seeking funding, it can sometimes see that we're kind of moving in similar directions, but obviously the work that we're all seeking to do is kind of long-term, sustainable change. There may be some areas of overlap, but we try and mitigate that as much as possible. And I suppose from an arts perspective, there's been a long history of arts funders working together, so I'll leave it to Al to kind of make reference for examples in that particular sector.
Alison Holdom
Yes, we have a history of working together with other funders. And in terms of the art sector. We are obviously in contact with other funders regularly. We were joint funders in a project called Creative Civic Change, which involved the Gulbenkian Foundation, Local Trust and Community Lottery. So we do work together sometimes on those large scale projects with other partners. But we're also aware that we are, often with arts projects, also an additional funder to organisations that have funding from arts councils across the UK as well. So we see ourselves as additional to that funding, if people are in that position. But we don't fund exclusively organisations that have that funding.
Veda Harrison
And just to say, in terms of working with other funders, a lot of the work we do, given the scale of the challenge and opportunity, when we talk about place-based work, we recognise that we are one funder, and we cannot achieve, through our strategies, all that's required, what organisations are looking for. So collaboration is really important.
I think I made reference in the presentation to a collaboration between five funders in six places, a long-term, large scale programme. But even that particular collaboration is providing resource that is a small amount within those places, and it's about how those communities can leverage further support from others in that area. So for Esmée, collaborative funding is really, really important because we are talking about, as a UK wide funder in many, many different communities and the depths of the challenge that needs to be addressed.
Luna Dizon
I'm going to carry on with the questions in the Q&A facility. So the first one is, do you fund faith-based charities?
Veda Harrison
I know that there is a reference to this in our FAQ about faith-based charities (question 2.14). And what's really important for us is that the exclusion is very, very clear. We don't fund charities for work that is the promotion of faith. But what is really interesting is something that we do fully recognise is that when it comes to community-based work, working in a place, we know that for a very, very long time, in some cases, centuries, faith communities have been at the forefront of change. They're very embedded in their communities. They know what's going on. They know who the connections are, who to speak to, have very deep relationships with other charities and individuals. So work that really speaks to that is really important. So generally, what we will do if a faith-based charity is coming forward to deliver work in a place in that work, and it's successful, the funding will be restricted to project costs. It won't be for core costs, but that is also in recognition of the work that faith communities have done for many, many years in delivering change in a community. And we have recently been working with an organisation in the West Midlands on a climate change initiative that is led by a faith community, but two different faith communities working together. And I think that's really, really important, the recognition of the diversity of organisations that are delivering place-based change.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. So I'm going to go to Sandra's question, and then I'm going to ask another question that feels a little bit related to me. So Sandra's question is: our project is based in East Anglia, an area with a very low multicultural population. Will this affect our bid for a grant?
The other question takes a different angle, but it's also DEI related. This one is from Lauriem. Sorry, if I pronounced your name wrong. In terms of DEI, what if a project is focused on working class and Black and People of Colour communities, and the team working on the project is part of these communities themselves, but the larger organisation the team is part of is not majority Black and from Black and People of Colour communities. How do you approach these situations? So the first question is about in an area where there's not a lot of multicultural diversity, and then the other one is about a project that is part of a larger organisation that might not be very diverse?
Veda Harrison
Yes, I think the first question we get asked about a lot, I think on our travels around the UK. We do go to very, very different communities, and we recognise that, for example, for more rural communities, say, and even some towns, in terms of whether that community is multicultural or not, people consider whether applying to an organisation like Esmée, would it be an issue? We would say not. I think I made reference when I was talking through the priorities and when we were talking about places, the importance that you know, for an organisation in a place, it's about understanding who is there and who is not, who is represented in your work and who isn't. It's not about trying to bring a community of color into your work for the sake of getting funding, because that in itself is really extractive practice. And that's not something we would encourage people to do, and we do spot it when it happens. So it's about being reflective of the communities that are there, but also identifying where you do have smaller communities of from Black and minoritised or Global Majority community. What is the nature of your relationship with them? How do you build relationships that is not extractive, that centres them, hears their voices and centres their work and seeks to build them up as organisations. So if you live in a place across the UK where there aren't a high proportion of, you know, racially diverse communities, you can still apply to us. That's fine, but you know, I would always say, who's not in the room? Do you know who is not in the room when it comes to your work, and that in itself, is about you as an organisation, developing your understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion, knowing your local demographics, knowing who is there, who isn't, is the most important thing. But it's not an exclusion if you don't have a high population. We're interested in in organisations who recognise this, who do want to work with communities of colour, in their area, and are thinking of ways to do that. So who do you know, who's there and who's not there? I'm going to stop talking the other question. Do you want to take the other question?
Rosa Sulley
I was just going to add a specific point on that, which is also when we're talking about DEI, we look across all protected characteristics. So I think that's really important to emphasise, is when we when we say DEI, that's what we mean. We mean all protected characteristics, and we want to understand how that looks in your place, and for you, as Veda said, for you, to tell us what that looks like in your community. And when we think about who's not represented, or who's not in the room, that might also be thinking about, perhaps who has been historically marginalised, or whose voices historically have been excluded from decision-making or conversations in your place. And that might be then starting to think about other groups, like migrants, for example, or certain low income communities. Thank you.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. Did you want to take this question, Lauriem's question as well.
Veda Harrison
that's really interesting, because I think it's something that we've talked about as part of our other strategic aim, A Fairer Future, because we do have a specific racial justice priority. But also, you know, racial justice is embedded across the whole of Esmée. I think what we're saying here, what you're referring to here, is that the fact that a community, marginalised community, a racialised community, is doing work, you know, the people that are delivering the work with Global Majority communities, but a part of a larger organisation, that's fine. I would say however, that the larger organisation in whom you are embedded, what changes are they going to make as a result of the work that you're doing? So the work isn't just siloed within that community of colour and with those leaders of the work from those communities of colour. How is that organisation supporting you as a Black or minoritised leader in delivering this work? How are they ensuring that this work is centered within their organisation? And most importantly, how is that work changing the nature of the wider organisation that is not minoritised-led. So this is a long-sustainable impact, not just on the community that you're working with, but also on the organisation itself, because it's about how shifts around thinking about race and ethnicity within organisations, white-led organisations who also have the responsibility for leading this work, but it's not resting on the shoulders entirely of people of colour within that organisation or within that community.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. I'm going to take Caz's question. So this is for Alison. Caz is interested in the potential relationship between Creative, Confident Communities and Arts Council place partnership funding. Would this be considered an opportunity that Esmée can add value to.
Alison Holdom
In general, pieces of work like that would be considered an opportunity. Because when we're looking at applications, as well as looking at making sure that organisations are explaining the context they're working in, and really understand it, we are also looking at what the opportunities are, and if there are established partnerships already in place, or if there are established pieces of funding that our funding would help to enhance, and particularly it would help to sustain and create longer term impact, then yes, it would be something that we would look at. It's not an essential, but we would, but it's something that we'd certainly consider an opportunity.
Luna Dizon
The next question: we are a national charity, but we have 40 plus community groups, all with our own separate bank account and modus operandi, would we be eligible to apply based on one of those communities?
Veda Harrison
So I think the structure of the organisation is interesting. Our eligibility criteria in terms of turnover and non-directors is really important here. I think an individual organisation to apply for this work would be fine, but again, it's about their strength of relationships in a place. It's also about how the other organisations, all the community groups, are going to learn from this. But as I said in my response, we don't generally fund the day-to-day work of national charities that have regional branches, we don't core fund them. The work has to be very specific to a particular outcome and you know, what's the strategic ambition of that work. We do sometimes get large national charities who are working in a place and have worked in that place for a long time, who have connections with others, but funding that charity to do their work day-to-day isn't something that we would fund, no.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. I think there's a similar question here about funding local charities that are affiliated with a national charity, if they are run independently.
Veda Harrison
I think, I think the last answer just still stands, actually. I mean, we know that, for example, in many particularly large charities, because there are many, but we know that on every high street there is particular types of charities that you see that have national brands and affiliations, and they are very important to in terms of the community are using their services day-to-day. Interestingly, it's about the role they play in broader place-based work, which is really, really important, not just finding that charity to do something that they wouldn't usually do.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. So I'm going to go to the next question. Sorry, Veda, this is for you again. Under the communities working together for change priority, are you able to fund participatory grant making when the decisions on the funding received will be devolved with local residents building skills in community and civic action.
Veda Harrison
We are actually, as part of the work that we've done in preparing our funding guidance and our roadmaps for work, we have identified this is a model of how you engage and work deeply with communities, that participatory grant making is part of that. Obviously, it will come down to where are the resources coming from for this work, it isn't just about funding or resources coming entirely from Esmée, in order to devolve the resources to the local community. So the question here would be, as a model, yes, in terms of a practice for an individual organisation coming forward saying, we want to do participatory grant making, and we want you to resource it, there's a question there about what resources you're bringing to the table as well. So there would be a conversation to be had about how practically that would be working. But in terms of participating grant making, we're currently testing the model in part of Yorkshire, so we're learning, we're already learning about how that practice actually happens. And as a model across the example, our LocalMotion initiative with five funders is kind of a hybrid model of participatory grant making, where actually a lot of the decision-making and the design is actually handed over to the community to deliver so yes, we are interested in that model, but resourcing it is the question to be discussed.
Alison Holdom
Can I just add something as well, that under the community-led approach in arts creativity, we're also funding projects that are doing participatory commissioning, so that the pieces of work that are commissioned through the use of our funding are commissioned by the community.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. The next question is for you, Alison from Claudia: for applications that focus on building capacity of long-term partnerships between arts organisations and voluntary sector organisations. What is the best way to strike a balance between describing the organisational change that they want to see and the artistic programme that will participate in that change?
Alison Holdom
Yes, that's, I think what we would say is that it's more to do with what the change would be to the participants and to the community. Quite often we see applications where, because of the level of co-creation involved, the ability to describe what the actual artistic practice will be, or the resulting artworks is impossible, and we're mindful of that, and we set our expectations around outcomes and indicators and outputs based on the model of co-creation. So I think it will be more about what's the impact on the community, what's the impact of the organisations involved in terms of how they work. But we would also expect to understand something about who the people involved from the arts organisation were, what their experience was, how they were approaching co-creation and co-leadership.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. So there's a question here from Anna. Can you tell me more about the research support that responds to your goals? What are the criteria of evaluation for this? So I think this is about how we came to, how we came to these, these long term outcomes.
Veda Harrison
If it's okay, Amy, can we take that one away? Yeah, because I think we need to, yeah. I think we need to think a bit more. We might come back to you and ask you to kind of expand that a bit more. And even if you're able to do that on the chat, I think we still need to take it away to think about it.
Luna Dizon
Yeah, that's okay. That was Anna's question.
So we'll take this question: the charity I work for is very community focused, with a number of services and a huge focus on volunteer and the positive power of this. Across the country, we are in a period of transition at present to ensure we can adapt and strengthen what we do and become more focused on community organising and development. Would this be something that the funding would support. As we need core funding we require to work on this at the strategic level. We also need to look at diversifying our income streams for the future, which we would build into the new strategy.
Veda Harrison
I suppose for this one, obviously, you've mentioned that you are on a journey of transition, and it sounds like, and forgive me, if I've got this completely wrong, that you are one type of organisation delivered in a particular way, and you want to pivot to do more community organising, because you see this as an approach that is more productive and more grassroots. You would need to spend time working that out first and then understand that in terms of our priorities, what are the things that you are looking for us to support? Specifically, I don't think, from what I understand of that question, we would be supporting that transition. Because if you've been one type of organisation, as I said, when we look at making decisions, we look at track records and all those kind of things. But if you don't see yourself necessarily, as currently sitting within the Creative, Confident Communities, but you're looking to transition to do more work in that space, you would need to go on that journey in order to develop your profile, but also, you know, the work that you're seeking to do, and then we could have a conversation. But that sounds like a redevelopment phase, and that's not something that we would necessarily support.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. So the next question I'm going to ask is Michelle's question. So if reading their EOI, we feel there is a better match with another priority, would you advise this? Or is it for for us to apply to the one we feel fits best and also highlight where we feel it could hit criteria, other priorities with some small development? I think there's been other questions that might have also been answered behind the scenes around work that fits multiple priorities. And the panel did also touch briefly on it. Do you want to talk a little bit about it?
Rosa Sulley
Yeah, I can pick up on this question, and colleagues can come in as well. I think first thing to say is the final sense of this question around how projects might be able to, sort of, have scopes to develop in different ways. I think the key thing to say that picks up on Veda's point from the previous question, is to come to us with a clear idea of what your work is and how you think it fits to our strategy. So it's not to put in an idea and then explore where that might be able to go. I think you need to have a really clear idea of your work and how you think it fits to our strategy. When, before you apply as well as when you're applying to us, when you put in that expression of interest, you'll be asked to select a primary priority that you think your work fits to. So there will also be space for you to pick a secondary priority, but sort of really in your answer, think about clearly how it fits with the primary priority, and use the space to talk about that. With our strategy, we receive a very high volume of expressions of interest, so we're not able to give one to one feedback or have discussions with people who submit an expression of interest about whether we think actually it might fit better with something else. However, we do know and understand that a lot of our areas of work are very interlinked, and so if we feel there is a strong fit amongst your work to our strategy that might hit against multiple priorities and outcomes, we're interested in talking to you about that once we get to that stage. But I think you should be really clear from the outset on how you see our work fitting and you see your work fitting into our strategy. Hope that answers the question.
Luna Dizon
Thanks, Rosa. I'm going to go to Amy's question next. We are a disability mental health charity who work with the local community to bridge the disability employment gaps through upskilling people and improving their mental health. The next stage of the project is to expand to delivering an online service to reach a wider geography. But we also know that some community groups will likely access this service over face to face that would generate a lot of learning. Would that be something that would be potentially fundable?
Veda Harrison
Thank you, Amy, for that question. I think we have you know in our answer to talking about communities of identity in place that geography is really important, and the fact that we don't and never have, you know, resourced or funded organisations that do service delivery. And this work sounds, you know, it's vital work within your community, but it does have an element of service delivery to it, so it's unlikely that we would fund this. So unfortunately, it's not something that we would consider as part of Creative, Confident Communities, which is looking at more strategic work, long-term strategic work that isn't just about that community of identity, but goes much, much broader across all of that part of that particular place.
Luna Dizon
Thanks, Veda. I'm gonna ask Gopa's question. We have a project that fits Esmée's strategy, but our annual income does not meet the eligible eligibility threshold. However, since we work in partnership with communities, schools, health and city-wide arts and cultural partnerships, will a group or collaborative application work?
Alison Holdom
Yes, we do accept applications for networks and from collaborations, what we ask is that they nominate someone to be the organisation that makes the application. That organisation would have to take on the financial responsibility for the grant. They would have to meet all the terms and conditions of the grant, and they would have to match our eligibility criteria. But it does mean that if you're working completely collaboratively, organisations that are below our financial guidelines can receive funding, but only for work that they're doing through genuine, collaborative piece of work. It means we would not be able to fund people with core costs. It would probably be for programmatic or project work that they were doing as a collaboration.
Luna Dizon
Can I just check, if applying, there has to be a lead organisation, that is, if it holds the grant exactly, would they need to meet?
Alison Holdom
They would, they would have to meet all our criteria in terms of the limits on finances, in terms of having the right governance models, and they would have to be be able to evidence that the other collaborating organisations were happy for them to be the fiscal host. So there are some requirements around how you approach us through that route, but it is a route you can take.
Luna Dizon
Brilliant. Thank you. So another question for you, Alison, please, could you clarify the difference between Creative, Confident Communities priority, community-led art and creativity and in our in another strategic aim, for A Fairer Future, arts and creativity making change priority?
Alison Holdom
Absolutely. The reason that culture and creativity and arts split across two areas of our funding is because, within A Fairer Future, there are two very specific pieces of funding that we do, which include arts and creativity. One of them is youth-led creativity, and that's a fund that's closed now. It was open in the spring. We made the grants in September, and that was very much about how young people can lead creativity that has an impact on their wider life. And so it fits into the work that we do in A Fairer Future with young people. The second piece of work in A Fairer Future, under the priorities, there is a representative cultural workforce, and again, it's a very specific piece of funding around making sure that the workforce in the cultural sector is representative of UK communities, and to strengthen those organisations that are representative. It's because it's not about place. Neither of those two pieces of funding are about place. They are in A Fairer Future, whereas the rest of the creativity funding that we do is very much place-based, and it's very much about community co-creation and community co-leadership, and that's why that's all in this, this funding aim.
Luna Dizon
Just to say that we've got about 7/8, minutes left of questions, hopefully we'll be able to, I think we'll be able to answer the remaining questions that are up. But if you do have another question, please just put it in the Q&A facility.
Rosa. I'm going to go to you next for Geoff's question about community enterprise as a specific area that we're looking at. They are a charity that supports local communities to start their own enterprises, social enterprises with training and support, advice and potential office space. Would this type of work be eligible if it helps to improve individual income and prospects and local economic development and regeneration?
Rosa Sulley
Yeah, thanks, Luna. That's a great question, Geoff, and I think the key thing about that question is the last sentence about the wider impact on economic development and regeneration in the place. Yes, we are really interested in work that supports community-led enterprises, and how communities are being supported to connect into that sector, particularly communities who perhaps are facing barriers to starting up enterprises themselves. That might be for a number of reasons, could be around access to finance or because of their background, or perhaps if they've been from a historically marginalised community. And so I think what we would really want to understand from an application is the context of the place that you're working in, how you're responding to some of the specific challenges, both in your community but also in the place. So that might be understanding how that links to wider area regeneration projects that are happening, for example, led by the council or other private development. How does this work tie into that, and how does this work address specific needs in that community, remembering that the focus of this outcome within Creative, Confident Communities, excuse me, is about how we can grow, scale and mainstream the community-led enterprise sector. So that's really the focus of our work here. So what we do really want to understand and see is how you are supporting the community-led enterprise sector to scale, or to become more resilient or to become more inclusive in a place.
Luna Dizon
Thanks Rosa. I'm just going to quickly answer Caz's question about, has there been or will there be a similar webinar for our aim for A Fairer Future?
I've just put in a link for some webinars that we did when we relaunched the A Fairer Future strategy. And so you can, you can see the link there. It's on our website. We do also try to hold several pre-application Q&A webinars a year. This one was focused on Creative, Confident Communities. We try to hold more general ones to open it up a little bit more, but hopefully the A Fairer Future specific webinars will be helpful, because that's where the team talk through our outcomes.
So we've got a few minutes left, I'll go to Kamal's question, our community interest company currently works with young people in their community in schools to support their mental health. We want to extend this to a different borough and work with children who are not in schools. Would this be eligible?
Veda Harrison
You say you meet the other criteria outlined in terms of governance. So again, Kamal, in terms of Creative, Confident Communities, the work that we're looking to support has to be strategic in nature. While this work in supporting young people's mental health and schools and outside of schools is absolutely vital, this isn't something that under Creative, Confident Communities we would we would necessarily fund, unless it's work that is seeking to influence policy across that place in terms of, you know, working with the local authority, the health authority, all thosekind of stewards of that type of work in a place, but just supporting mental health provision in schools and outside of schools, that's not something that Creative, Confident Communities would support.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. And so, one more question in the Q&A facility: can a lead applicant in one application be a partner in another concurrent application?
Alison Holdom
Yes, you can. If you are part of a collaboration, you can, providing obviously the work matches all the other priorities in that funding, you can also apply, as for yourself, for your own funding for the organisation, but obviously both applications would have to be a really strong match with our priority for that work.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. I'm just going to share a final couple of slides with just some more support in terms of applying. So the first link is to accessibility-related support. We know that there may be barriers to our funding process due to accessibility. If you click on that link that will tell you about the additional support that we provide. We make access payments of up to £500 to support you to put in an application to us, and that's also applicable throughout the application process as well.
We also have a lot of FAQs on our on our website. And you might find there is an answer to your question in there.
And then I just want to highlight GrantNav, some of you may have used it before, but it's a really great resource. I don't know how many funders, a lot of funders put their funding data on there. We share all our grants on there. So it's a really good way to search for funders working on specific issues. And there's a link in there that gives you tips on how to use GrantNav as well.
And then, there's also links to previous webinars and where the team talked about our strategy in A Fairer Future and Our Natural World. And then also, we have a couple of other pages with useful resources. So one is a link to other funding sources. Those are funding directories and other guidance on looking for funding. And we also have a page on useful sector resources, which has information links to a range of topics, including fundraising, legal, campaigning, digital and safeguarding. I think that's it. I will leave it to Veda to say final words.
Veda Harrison
Yes, just to say thank you so much to all of you that have attended. Thank you so much for your questions. All of these things are really helpful for us as we seek to apply our strategy in practice. I hope you'll hear that from the way that we've explained Creative, Confident Communities as well. There are three different priorities. They are all working very closely together in terms of the role that communities play in directing economic and regeneration in a place, how they are seeking to support their place, in terms of decision-making and change and organising. But also the important role that culture and creativity plays in all of this, in building up the skills and the narrative and the stories that communities can tell about themselves. So thank you so much for all the work that you do. Thank you for attending the webinar. Thank you to our colleagues, Gillian, Gillian, Larissa, Siân. Thank you to Luna for your tech expertise, and thank you to Alison and Rosa for being on the panel today. Thank you so much. And finally, sorry not to forget, thank you to Altan and to Nana for interpreting for us today. Have a great afternoon and goodbye.
Luna Dizon
Thank you, everyone. Bye, bye.