Webinar recording and additional questions
- Watch the recording and download the presentation.
- See the additional questions we gave typed answers to (which aren't included in the recording).
Speakers
- Catherine Hillis, Director of A Fairer Future
- Laura Lines, Funding Manager Lead – A Fairer Future
- Sam Purkis, Young Consultant
- Luna Dizon, Communications Manager
Welcome, introduction and housekeeping
Catherine Hillis
Hello everyone and welcome to this webinar on the new Youth-Led Creativity fund co-designed by Esmée and the Involving Young People Collective. We are absolutely delighted to share our plans with you today and very much hope it's useful.
I'm Catherine Hillis, I'm Director of A Fairer Future here at Esmée. I'm here with my colleagues, Laura, and Luna. And in another box is Sam, a young consultant with our Involving Young People Collective. We also have Francesca from the Collective in the background to help with the Q&A along with colleagues Al and Heather. We were going to be joined by Aaliyah, another of the young consultants who's worked on the design of the fund but unfortunately, Aaliyah isn't well today. So get well soon Aaliyah.
For accessibility, we have Nana, an Altan who will be providing British Sign Language Interpretation, interpreting what is spoken live. We also have asked the speakers to describe themselves and where they are. So I'll kick off on that. I'm Catherine, I'm a middle aged woman with very tight corkscrew hair wearing a purple T-shirt, shirt. I should say that if you could see it really close, it's got the dinosaurs on it. And I'm sitting in our office in Kings Cross. I'll pass to Laura.
Laura Lines
Hi, morning, everyone. I'm Laura I'm one of the funding managers under A Fairer Future. I'm a white woman with shoulder length brown wavy hair with a fringe and I'm wearing a black and white and blue pattern shirt. I'm sat here in the library of our offices in Kings Cross with Luna and Catherine. I'll pass over to Luna.
Luna Dizon
Hi everyone. I'm Luna in the Comms Manager at Esmée. I am a Southeast Asian woman, I've got long straight black hair, a blue jumper on and you can't really tell but I've got big earrings with leopard print on them. And I will pass on to Sam.
Sam Purkis
Hello, I'm one of the young consultants. I'm a white dude with a bit of a beard, and I'm wearing a grey jumper that says glorious on it and big headphones.
Catherine Hillis
Excellent. Thanks very much, Sam, and hope this is glorious in terms of our webinar. So just a few points of housekeeping practicalities before we start. So live captioning is available for this session. So you can click on the closed captions button at the bottom of this window to see them within zoom.
You can post questions at any point using the Question and Answer facility, which you'll find at the bottom of your screens, and I'd really encourage you to vote for questions submitted by another participant if that's something you'd really like to hear answered. And you can do this by clicking on the thumbs up icon next to the question. As I mentioned before, we have Al, Heather and Francesca typing responses to questions in the Q&A facility. We'll try and answer as many as possible, and we'll prioritise those that have been voted. But if there are questions that we miss in the time we've got available today, we'll try and answer them afterwards and pop them up on our website.
We'll also be adding anything that comes up today into our frequently asked questions on the website. And you may find the answer to your question already there.
We're expecting a lot of questions. So please don't worry if you miss anything live, we are recording the webinar. And we'll share the transcript with the additional questions covered on our website in due course.
So just in terms of the structure of the session today, I'll do a quick introduction to Esmée and why we're changing the way that we fund under the youth-led creativity outcome.
Then I'll hand over to Sam for why youth-led creativity and to talk through a little bit about the co-design process and some features that have changed for this funding programme.
Laura is going to take us through the application process, and then we'll have time for Q&A.
And we really want to make the most of this time to answer your questions. So we'll try and not talk too much, leaving time to answer as many questions as possible. But as this is a new funding programme and co-designed in a way with the Collective that we haven't worked before, we may need to take some questions away, because we want to discuss them with the Collective and hear their views. If that is the case, we will update any answers on the website as soon as possible.
So, the aim of this webinar is to share more about the fund. Hopefully everyone has seen the guidance that was just launched on Monday, but we want to explain a little bit more about what we're hoping to achieve. We want to be transparent about the criteria and what we will and won't support.
We know that the climate for funding is tough, and that we're going to receive many more brilliant applications than we will be able to support. So we want to be clear about what the criteria are, how we're using them to make decisions, and help you understand whether it's worth investing time in an application.
Hopefully at the end, you'll have a clearer picture of what we're looking for. And this will help you decide if the fund is right for you and your work.
About Esmée and the Involving Young People Collective
Catherine Hillis
So a quick introduction about us. Esmée is an independent grantmaker funding across a range of issues and this includes those in the arts and youth sector. And we have a real interest in empowering young people to lead change.
The Involving Young People Collective is a group of young people connected by their drive for social change. The Collective was formed four years ago with support from HUDL Youth Development Agency. And since then the Collective has worked to advise Esmée across all areas of our strategy and funding practice.
So why have we co-designed a new fund with the Collective? Within Esmée's strategy for A Fairer Future, we have the priority 'arts and creativity making change'. And an outcome that youth-led culture and creativity enhances young people's lives. I think we can see that wording right up there on the slide. And enables them to influence change in their communities or wider society. Yes, there we go. It's on the screen. Youth-led culture and creativity enhances young people's lives and enables them to influence change in their communities or wider society.
And under this outcome, we've funded some brilliant organisations. But we're keen that in everything that we do that we had young people at the heart of decision making, in order to maximise the impact of our funding. So we shut this outcome to applications last autumn in order to work with the Collective over these last four or five months. We wanted to be challenged on what and how we were funding, co-designing the funds that we are launching today. Also, as we're going to be funding a cohort of organisations at the same time, we hope we'll be able to enable learning and networking by bringing grantees together and develop a cohort to better understand how we can support youth-led creativity. So that's enough for me, I'm now going to hand over to Sam from the Collective to take us through the next part of the presentation.
Sam Purkis
Thank you. Yeah, just a little bit about the Involving Young People Collective. I'm going to warn you now I'm not reading from a script. So bear with me. We're the Involving Young People Collective and young consultants. We're young people from all over the country. And we work with Esmée. But we're sort of managed and hired by HUDL, which gives us that nice amount of autonomy and separation. And it enables us to collaborate together. And we've worked on things like we've created values on how Esmée works with us and how they work with young people. We've worked on different programmes to do with environmental organisations and schemes. And we work on grant applications to make sure young people's voices are centred with what's going to be funded within the future. And we also act as like a sort of a critical friend to Esmée, but we don't shout at each other. But we, we have sort of like constructive arguments, and we challenge each other.
Why youth-led creativity and aims of the programme
Sam Purkis
And now I'm going to talk a little bit about what is youth-led creativity, and what we see it as. And we know that everyone in the Collective has their own definition of this. And there will be some quotes you'll see in a minute from some of my colleagues. But for me, youth-led creativity is about giving young people the power back and centering them back into those conversations, and giving them the autonomy, to have the power to go into these conversations and make sure that they're not separated and people making decisions on their behalf, so that they are a powerful voice in that and it gives them the resources and the knowledge from someone like Esmée to really make the most of their work and the mission that they want to achieve.
As you can see from here, three of my colleagues and their quotes of what they think youth-led creativity is in a minute.
If we could go to slide seven. We wanted to talk about how we reimagined youth-led creativity. We wanted to bring a new voice and a new idea and we want to sort of challenge maybe traditional structures of how this work is done.
And we were really what was really important to us is that joy and care of young people was completely centred in the work.
I myself am a product of outreach organisations - very proudly. I've done work and schemes and organisations, work with them that some of them have been absolutely brilliant and changed my life. And some of them haven't. Some of them are felt tokenistic. So we really wanted to centre that the young people are cared for. If they're going to be doing challenging work working on things, they really feel supported.
And we also, as I said before, we want to put the power in young people's hands. And, this also, we think the youth-led creativity fund can have the benefit of fostering the next generation of arts leaders and organisation leaders that work in this sector and enable them to skill share, because I think there's brilliant work being done that maybe big funders don't always see. And this is a great opportunity to change that.
We also one of our values, with the Involving Young People Collective, is 'nothing about us without us'. And again, that's talking about if you want to make decisions on our behalf, we've got to be in the room having those conversations.
And then now I'll speak a little bit about how the co-design of this fund and how we work with Esmée and some of the sort of exciting changes that we've made.
We have changed the minimum income floor, which I don't think is something Esmée may not have done before. And this enables, what I think this could enable is going to bring completely new voices into this space, and ideas that might maybe get lost or organisations that might feel a bit too intimidated to approach a large funder. Esmée is going to be able to build new relationships and see the incredible work that is being done out there. Because the work is being done, it just needs to be showcased.
We wanted to change the age range. So traditionally, it's usually sort of 14 to 25. That's the cut off. I think we believe that slightly outdated now due to the cost of living crisis and COVID. So we say that the majority is between 14 and 30. And that's to say we want to leave it up to the organisation's discretion. If you have someone above 30, you think still need your care and support. That's up to you.
We also wanted to make the submission process more inclusive. So we've put in audio submissions, we know that not everyone's best work is done in written form. So we wanted to give everyone the best chance of really showing off their work and their skill set.
And then again, we wanted to we talk about centering youth voice. So we want to make sure this fund is centred in youth voice. So we've made sure that youth decision is completely throughout the grant. So it's going to be scored by young people. Like our Collective is involved in every step of this. So when you're showing your work with young people, it's going to be young people reviewing and scoring it and that was really important to us. And I'll hand back to Catherine.
About the Youth-Led Creativity funding and how to apply
Catherine Hillis
Brilliant. Thanks so much, Sam. And I think a few people online have been having trouble accessing the slides, so Luna's just dropped the link in where you can download them from our website. So apologies if you haven't been able to see them as we've been talking. Brilliant, I shall hand over to Laura now to take us through some more details on the funding programme.
Laura Lines
Great, thank you, I've got a slightly drier part of presentation, talking about the nuts and bolts and the processes. And I'm not going to go into detail of everything that's in the guidance, but kind of talk around some of the processes and I guess who's making decisions where. And obviously, we're taking questions afterwards.
So we're really excited to be working in this way, and launching this fund. But we're also really mindful of the demand for funds and the size of this fund. So I think there's over 200 people on this webinar, over 300 signed up. And essentially, we're giving away £1 million this year. Just, I guess, to kind of put it in perspective, what the demand is and what we can offer, we expect to make 8 to 12 grants.
And we're really aware, through our main portfolio and funding, arts and creativity and young people work we've been funding for a long time, that multi-year core cost grants is really what is needed by the sector and what people would prefer. So we anticipate that most of the grants will be that format. However, we don't want to close the doors to really specific, time-limited pieces of work. So if there's a really important project that you do want to explore, then we are open to project and core costs.
We have imposed a limit of £120k over three years just to give a sense of the scale and size of the grants we're looking to make and to ensure that we can make a good number and have a range of of work within the cohort.
As Catherine said earlier, we're going to be co-designing, with the funded organisations, a learning programme to sit alongside this. And that will hopefully meet the needs of the specific cohort. And that might be organisational development, it might be convening, it might be ways to share good practice or collective action. There'll be a facilitator and all the organisations in the cohort will be compensated for their time and contributions to that.
We've taken this approach in our leaving care strand, which has been running for five to six years now. And we've got lots of learning to share from that. We've seen the benefits of working in that really focused way, building additional capacity as a cohort and organisations working together across similar issues and areas.
If we move on to the what we won't fund. This is our list of exclusions, which is in the guidance. I'm not going to read through this. And don't worry, you don't need to read through this now, it's all in the guidance pack. I think the few things that I will draw attention to is, as Sam said, we have removed from our usual guidance we say there's £100k minimum income. And we have removed that. The young consultants were really keen for us to do that because of who that's excluding. And it's been a barrier to entry. So we are trialing this.
We are aware that this could significantly increase the numbers applying, so we're really hoping that this webinar, and the guidance and easy read versions will help people to look at the criteria and understand the type of work we're hoping to fund. We really don't want to kind of waste people's time putting together an expression of interest if we're not likely to fund you. So we would point everyone to look really clearly at the criteria and the guidance on that.
Again, this one is not for organisations that are brand new to youth leadership. We will be looking for organisations who have already made a commitment to centering the voices of young people and prioritising youth leadership within their organisations. And also it's worthwhile flagging that we don't expect to support large organisations where youth and creativity is just a minor part of their overall work.
So I think if we move on to the How to Apply slide. Right, thank you. So this is a very simplistic overview of the application process. And there's different questions at different stages, which are outlined in the guidance. But essentially, we're taking a slightly longer expression of interest from our usual two questions. There's three specific questions linked to the criteria. And we'll ask you to obviously submit your website and any social media handles as well. And then an Esmée staff will do an initial eligibility check on all the expressions of interest.
And then two young consultants will review every expression of interest, and we'll give it a score based on the criteria for the fund. And that's based on the the information you submit but also content on your website and your social media to get a good understanding of what the organisation is about and look at. And if you've got videos on there and reports and things like that, that will be taken into consideration.
And then there'll be a panel to shortlist from the expression of interest applications to invite to proposal stage. That panel will be the young consultants that have been involved in the scoring as well as the funding managers at Esmée Fairbairn. The scoring will lead that process.
But we also have created space for if there's organisations which the consultants have identified perhaps aren't scoring as high on the criteria, but they're doing something really exceptional, unique thing, and flag them. We will pick that up in the conversation at the panel to make sure we have a really rounded cohort. And again, we will be looking at how within that cohort that we've got a good range of organisations working with different groups of young people and also where they're based geographically across the UK.
So again, scoring will lead this but other things will be taken into consideration in the round when we're making those judgments.
Those decisions on the expression of interest will all be made in May. So you'd hear back from as in May, whether you've been invited to make a proposal, or whether you've been declined at the expression of interest stage. And we're hoping to provide feedback by email for any organisation that we are declining at that stage.
A small number will come through to proposal, and then we will ask you to submit the standard documents around accounts and safeguarding. If you're not a registered charity, your constitution. And then the default assessment process will be to have a conversation where we will ask you more about your track record, your impact, how you work, your approach to learning, evaluation, etc.
And again, all those kinds of longer questions that we're going to cover are in the guidance.
The young consultants are really keen that we offer choice. So actually, if your preferred method isn't to have a conversation, if you do want to provide a response in written form then there is that option as well. So the default is to have a conversation, and we will prepare that into a paper. But if you prefer to write your response, then we can also adapt to that. Then we'll prepare those in a write-up paper with the young consultant. And those recommendations will go to our Approvals Committee, which is a mix of Trustees, senior management team, and funding managers to have the approval of the grants.
Young consultants are involved along the whole process. So the final decisions will be made early September. So you'll hear back from us then if you've been successful. And again, we will give tailored feedback to whoever we aren't able to take forward. I think that is everything on the assessment process.
Q&A - questions are in bold and numbered
Luna Dizon
Thanks. I think we're going to move on to the Q&A now. And you may have already noticed that some of our colleagues and also Francesca, one of our young consultants has already been answering your questions. And I want to reiterate again, that if there are any questions that we're not able to answer during the webinar, we will answer them afterwards and share the responses on our website along with the recording and transcript of this webinar. I know there's a lot, it can be difficult to keep track of everything that's happening, especially with so many questions being asked. But just to assure you that all the information will be available afterwards. And you can process that in your own time if you if you prefer. And so I'm going to start.
1. There's a good question right here, actually, from Leanne, about what the term creativity means, and how wide this spectrum spans.
Catherine Hillis
Brilliant. I mean, thanks, Leanne. It's such an interesting question. And I think it's where a lot of our discussions with the Collective started actually in the whole point of the co-design process. And obviously a word like creativity means a lot of things to different people, as Laura was saying. And as part of the co-design process, we also heard from some of the organisations we already fund on the youth-led creativity outcome. And again, they spoke about what creativity meant to them. We definitely don't want to restrict this, we want it to be open. We're not saying it's only particular art forms, or only particular sort of forms of culture. We want to be open in that. But we do want there to be some element of creative process and approach embedded in the work. I don't know, Sam, if you've got anything that you'd want to chip in on that one.
Sam Purkis
Only that that's kind of again, up to you, you're bringing that to the space. What that creativity means to you. But yeah, like Catherine said on going slightly beyond just engagement, there has to be some kind of creative output but that is down to your own interpretation.
Luna Dizon
I'm going to go in with a question from Chloe. Similarly, it's a little bit about clarifying what we mean about certain terms that we use. So, Chloe's asked:
2. Could you confirm the point made about youth leadership, and whether organisations that don't currently prioritise youth leadership would not be eligible? And there was also a question about what we mean by youth-led, so perhaps the panel can take both of those questions.
Laura Lines
Yes, so on youth leadership. This isn't for an organisation's first steps into exploring this. This is for organisations who have already committed to prioritising youth leadership, and are already making inroads to that and have a track record of doing that. In terms of youth leadership, I think there was some quotes earlier of what the young consultants have said about how they see youth leadership and hearing their voices, and they're directly feeding into the strategy and the policy of that work. I don't know, Sam, if you want to come in more on youth leadership, what's meant by that, and what you'd be looking for in expressions of interest?
Sam Purkis
Yeah, again, there's a certain element of it, which the organisation's can bring. But what's very important to us is that there is some kind of track record in youth leadership. Like Laura said, it shouldn't be the first sort of go at it. Even if there's an individual who's worked with another organisation that has done good work in that past, and now maybe they're setting up their own organisation, that would be okay. I think it's just about really centering the youth. There's a real equal power share in that relationship, I think, is what's important to me.
Catherine Hillis
Brilliant. Thanks, Sam. Just to jump in on that one as well, I think there's a link in the guidance to the Involving Young People Collective's values. These values that have been developed by the Collective after doing a lot of research into other documents, talking about youth leadership, youth engagement, youth participation, and that set of values has really driven our work at Esmée and with the Collective to think about what does good youth engagement mean? So definitely worth having a look at that.
But as Sam said, we did debate in the co-design process, whether we wanted to put particular parameters around this sort of funders have done that and said, you know, you must have a huge board, or you must have this number of young people involved in your leadership, etc, I guess we wanted to, we recognise a lot of different sorts of organisations, youth leadership can mean different things to different groups of young people. So we wanted to leave it open. But that principle, as Sam said, about sharing power, and about the values of how you're working with young people is definitely really important. So do check out that document. Thanks.
Luna Dizon
I'm going to move on to a question that was asked and submitted in advance.
3. This is a question from George. And so they are a rurally located organisation. They work with a wide range of people, including people underrepresented in arts and culture, which we've listed in the guidance that this fund is aiming to prioritise support for. Their question is, they were saying: there simply aren't the numbers for us to focus specifically, for example, on neurodivergent young people, as there might be in a city. Instead, responding to our local geography, we run inclusive programmes that help members from a wide diversity of backgrounds, but without focusing specifically on any one of those backgrounds or situations. So my question is, would we still be eligible to apply without a specialism in a certain group?
Laura Lines
Yes. We're constantly aware of the barriers that the young people face in rural areas. And I think if your work is reaching a broad range of young people that share some of those specific characteristics that we've listed, that's fantastic. And so it would be eligible. What we really care about, rather than being specifically targeted for specific groups, that your overall work and reach is inclusive. So that's, I think, what we'd be looking for in the expression of interest.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. Okay. I'll go back to the questions in the in the Q&A. I know that there were a couple of questions around the process.
4. So there's one around whether there will only be one funding round this year.
5. And also a question here about when we said that we're going to be making decisions in September. So could a project start from September or does it need to be October.
So those are, if you could take both of those questions together.
Laura Lines
Yeah. So there is for this year 2024, there is only going to be one funding round and that's the full £1 million will be designated in that round. Future years is to be confirmed. This is a pilot, we're testing this approach, how this works along with all the different kind of mechanisms and things that Sam has already spoken about. So we are piloting this. So there is no kind of further commitment immediately beyond this, this is still part of our strategy. But how we fund in this way is still, I guess, looking at this pilot and how that develops.
And the second part was, yes, the grants will be decided in September, I guess, when we release payments, it's for work in the future, we can't fund retrospectively. So if we're funding a specific piece of work, that would need to start after you've received your first payment. However, if it is for core costs, there's a little bit more flexibility in terms of that. So if it is just starting in September and the payment goes through October. That's okay. But ultimately we don't fund for retrospective work.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. And sorry, there's a lot of questions. I'm just looking through to see what would be a good question. Okay, I'm just going to pick one. And I'm going for Zellah's question.
6. Our creative media project is one of a number of programmes of work with young people, would this affect our eligibility?
Catherine Hillis
I would say not. I mean, we recognise there are some organisations that do have quite developed practice around working with young people and creativity, but maybe do other things as well. We are conscious that some organisations see creativity as a tool to support young people that may do other things. And that's totally fine. I mean, as Laura said before, it's more about how you would be able to meet the criteria. So showing that you that your work is driven and shaped by young people, showing that you have a track record in terms of working with young people from underrepresented communities, prioritising the joy and care of young people using arts and creativity as a tool. These are the things that we'll be assessing for in the applications. But yes, if this is one element of your work, that's fine. I suppose, if you were a larger organisation, and this was just, you know, one very small programme, perhaps that's less likely. We really want to see this work, an organisation's commitment to it. But certainly, if you do other things, that's fine. I'm not sure I've answered that particularly well, Sam or Laura, do you want to jump in on anything? Brilliant. That made sense.
Luna Dizon
Okay, so we move on to another question that's related to eligibility.
7. Will the organisation's experience of handling large grants be an eligibility criteria or taken into account in scoring applications?
Catherine Hillis
Yeah, it's an interesting one. I guess as Sam said, we are hoping to reach organisations that we haven't necessarily funded before. And part of removing the minimum criteria was I suppose to recognise there could be some smaller organisations. Obviously, there is a certain amount of standing in terms of whether the request kind of reflects the size of your organisation. If you were set up very recently, and you came in for a very large grant, there would be a lot of questions about your organisational capacity to handle that. If we thought the work was amazing, it may be that we are able to structure some support, as Laura said before in the in the Learning Programme around that. So I mean, it will definitely be something we take into consideration. But I wouldn't say to, if you've never had a grant before, not to come in for this programme. But Sam, I guess, when you're looking through EOIs I don't know if you want to talk about anything else that will jump out for you in terms of a new organisation?
Sam Purkis
No, I think if you're a new organisation like that's not going to affect how I perceive your work at all. I would be looking at whether any individuals in that organisation, what's their track record like, what have they done before? But again, it comes down to if you have a brilliant idea, then it's a brilliant idea. We're going to discuss it.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. I'm gonna move on to another question that was sent in advance.
8. This is from Benjamin, his first question was: do we accept applications from not-for-profit organisations limited by guarantee?
9. Then he also goes on to say that they are a youth-led organisation, which is using digital activities to highlight and raise awareness of youth issues and get involved in the identification of solutions. So they would love to hear more about the work that we're doing not just in youth-led creativity through this programme, but perhaps explore ways in which they might be able to work together with us. And I don't know, if you'd like to just expand on other ways that we're doing.
Catherine Hillis
Yeah, perhaps I'll just kick off by perhaps putting it in context of other work that Esmée's doing. So certainly, as well as this Youth-Led Creativity fund, Esmée's really interested in youth-led change, we have an outcome around that, that you may have seen under our 'children and young people's rights' priority. We've worked in partnership with the Paul Hamlyn Foundation on the Act for Change fund. And if you look at our website, there's a lot of resources from that programme - a lot of the learning around youth-led change and activism, campaigning, youth organising, including a really interesting report that Chrisann Jarrett, the CEO of We Belong did for us on the future of youth-led change in the UK.
And off the back of that, we've also been working with Blagrave and Civic Power Fund, who have just recently launched the Alliance for Youth Organising. Again, you can find details about that on our website.
I say all that just, I suppose, to centre this work in that broader context of youth-led change. Because one of the things that first led us to articulate this outcome in our strategy was seeing this really interesting Venn diagram of organisations led by young people or sharing power with young people who were thinking through solutions for the future about campaigning, who are using arts and creativity as a tool for change. And so we noticed this kind of interesting crossover, I guess, between youth organising and youth-led change and arts and creativity. So certainly, we are very interested in that and do have a look at some of the learning resources that we've shared from our previous work.
Laura Lines
I'll just jump in on the bit about funding not-for-profit organisations limited by guarantee. The answer is yes. But you'd obviously need to make sure that there's, we'd be checking see there's an asset lock in place in your governing documents, and that the governance requirements meet ours, which is majority non-executive directors, most of the board are not paid members of staff or paid for services delivered.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. I'm going to move on to another question. And I know there's been other related questions around organisations not necessarily being youth-led, but maybe having youth-led programmes.
9. So Emma's question is, she says: young people's programmes are only part of what we do. We supported 250 16 to 25 young homeless people in 2023, that element is youth-led, but it's only part of the overall work that we do. Would we be eligible to apply?
Catherine Hillis
Yeah, I mean, certainly we're not asking that organisations are youth-led themselves. This comes back to Sam's reflections earlier. Coming back to the criteria, if you have a track record of sharing power with young people and co-designing and working with young people, then that that certainly would be eligible, even if that's only one element for what you do.
Laura Lines
Think on that, because we were saying before, our preference is to give core costs where we can, but I guess if your overall mission is not directly targeted, it probably would be like a project or a restricted grant for that specific, youth-led creativity work. But I'd be really keen to hear what Sam's take is on bigger generalist organisations and having specific projects within them. What you might be looking for at the expression of interest.
Sam Purkis
I guess for me, I'd go back to how interesting is your youth-led programme like if the rest of your organisation or the example you just gave sounds like a really powerful organisation but we'd be specifically just looking at the youth-led aspects of it when we're scoring and what that programme or that thing that you want funding would be? So I definitely wouldn't be put off applying if you do other things. It just we would be really specifically looking at your youth-led work.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. So I am going to ask Sarah's question:
10. I run a youth service with an active youth voice group. We have joined a youth collective forming a new charity, and we lead on the youth work. The new collective has a 50% young trustee Board. Creativity is a major focus of our delivery and feature plans. Could a new youth collective apply?
Catherine Hillis
Yes, in short. I'm just reading it. So the youth collective is a charity. I mean, so long as the youth collective is constituted as a not-for-profit organisation as Laura said before, or as a charity, then yes, absolutely. It could apply. Yes. And if particularly creativity is a major force of what you do. Absolutely.
Luna Dizon
Great, thank you. There's a few questions on organisational structure. So there's another one here:
11. Do you consider grassroots horizontally structured charities? For example, everyone on my team feeds into decisions. We have trustees for the sole purpose of signing legal documents. Or do you require charities with boards and strict decision making processes?
Catherine Hillis
I'm happy to take that one. I would say yes, we are open to that. Again, the criteria around being constituted that is something that was that obviously, we would need to see. But it sounds like you are constituted. And in terms of horizontal structures, we're quite interested in that. There's an organisation that we have funded under youth-led creativity before, Voices That Shake based at Platform, which again, would describe itself as a flat, horizontally structured organisation, I'm sure. If not, Voices That Shake tell me off for saying that. But yeah, we are interested in those kinds of structures, so long as there's accountability for the things that we would normally look for in terms of safeguarding, etc, financial management, but yeah, horizontal structure would not be a barrier to application.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. I'm gonna answer this question quite quickly, because there's a quick answer.
12. And so the learning partner role, will this be open to tender? If so, when?
It will be open to tender, we're not sure on timing.
Laura Lines
Because we want to co-design this with the cohort, once we see the organisations that we're gonna be funding and co-design with them. So I guess it's certainly September, we'd hope to kind of come together before Christmas and put out a tender. So hopefully, this side of Christmas, I would have thought. Though, specific times, I don't think we can give you at this stage.
Catherine Hillis
But we will update on the website. And we'll be working very closely with the Collective thinking through how the learning partner will work. So yeah, it will take a little bit of time. But we'll update the website and get it out as soon as possible.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. So this is an interesting question.
13. What outcomes are you looking for? And are they influenced by the cost of living crisis?
Catherine Hillis
Really interesting one. Sam, would you like to go first on this, one? I know, we had a lot of conversations about how both COVID and cost of living crisis have impacted on young people.
Sam Purkis
Yeah, I think it's a good thing for any organisation to have a think about. But I don't think there has to be necessarily a specific outcome. I don't think we're looking for that, but maybe we are looking for, or I am looking for organisations that have taken that into account. And have done that research about what kind of world young people are experiencing right now and what kind of challenges. And then the kind of things we're looking for in terms of outcomes is varied. We want young people to be gaining confidence, young people to be gaining leadership, young people to be able to further their careers. There's not one specific outcome we want, but we want a good outcome and young people to have their time valued and their time that they put into your project to be worthwhile.
Luna Dizon
Thank you.
Catherine Hillis
Could I just jump in on one thing? Sorry, my cogs were going a bit slowly. Just on the cost of living crisis. It's worth saying as well that we totally recognise that organisations are in a difficult place now because of the rising costs that they're having to meet. So when you apply, please do apply for everything that would cover the costs. We're keen for people to build those costs in.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. This is another good question:
14. One of the things which often confuses us about Esmée funding, is the overlap between programmes. For example, if we are working with young people in a specific place, we're doing a creative project with young people to explore the natural world. Would this fund to be more appropriate than your other funds?
Laura Lines
That is a great question. And I think we do hear this feedback, I think both in a positive and a negative way. Within our wider strategy, we've got specific long-term outcomes under each of these strategic aims. So I think if you're applying to the main fund, I guess what I would suggest is you look specifically at those longer term outcomes and see which of those your work most closely aligns to. In terms of this, again, with this specific fund, I think it is looking at the specific criteria here and seeing whether the work you're doing fits that criteria or whether it is more aligned to the Creative, Confident Communities or Our Natural World. There's a lot of work we found in our main portfolio, which does cut across most of the work we're doing is intersectional. There is a natural overlapping through our main process, if you apply through one and we can see it might be better assessed under another, we would kind of look at it in that light as well. So it wouldn't necessarily be an immediate no, if you put it into something, and we thought it was a strong fit to something else. So we'd be looking at that as we kind of read through the expression of interest. Do you have more to add?
Catherine Hillis
No, I think that's perfect.
Luna Dizon
All right, thank you.
Catherine Hillis
There's a couple perhaps that I might just take if I may, Luna, around partnership working.
15. So Rebecca's question: can a local authority apply as the lead applicant?
The answer to that is no, we can't fund directly to a local authority but you can apply in partnership with another not-for-profit organisation.
And the other question I think I probably slightly answered at the same time is:
16. Can two organisations apply together in partnership?
And yes, you can. We do fund partnerships, we will be obviously looking for specific things within that just to understand how you work together how power is shared between the organisation's issues, like how you manage safeguarding in that context, but we would address that in assessment. But partnerships projects, yes, are all fine. We will be assessing on one lead organisation, so you need to put forward a lead organisation who would be the financial host.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. So next question:
17. Would mental health challenges be considered a disability? I work for CSA support charity for children and young people?
Catherine Hillis
I'll jump in first on this. Yes, you can certainly apply for work supporting young people with mental health challenge issues. So yes, that would absolutely be something we'd look at. I don't know, Sam, if there's anything that you would like to say around work engaging around mental health? I know. It's something that came up in discussions.
Sam Purkis
Yeah, I think that would probably come back to when we were looking at the prioritising the joy and the care. Mostly, we'd want the creative element to still be strong. If you are using creativity as a tool to help young people that are facing challenges with their mental health, and yeah, that's something that we're going to be interested in and look at.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. I'm gonna move on to Gavin's questions. There are a few questions.
18. What are your expectations for a typical or average grant?
19. Are you seeking to fund mostly new or additional work? Or can it support the development or extension of existing work?
20. And do you expect a certain level of match or co-funding?
Laura Lines
Should I start? Yeah. Really good question. I think yeah, what is the typical grant? I'm not sure there is a typical grant. We're really looking at the impact. And I guess the youth leadership aspects and the sharing and the learning that can come with that. So if that is a new piece of work within a well-established organisation, or people have got a good track record that would be eligible as well as extension or building on existing work. I don't think we would discriminate whether it's new or existing. I think it's looking at the track record, and the impact of the work.
In terms of expecting a certain level of match and co-funding. I think that depends on the overall size and costs of either the organisation or the projects you're seeking funding for. Obviously, we appreciate £120k over three years is the absolute maximum we could consider. So therefore, you may be bringing in sources of funding either through your core costs or other project costs. So we'd be looking at that in the round.
Catherine Hillis
That's great.
Laura Lines
Did the consultants have a view on whether you'd have a preference with existing or new?
Sam Purkis
No, I don't think so. I think because it's a pilot fund, we'd be probably looking for a mix. That would be sort of the ideal benefit. But again, it depends what comes in front of us, what we're reading.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. And next question:
21. We're an arts organisation with a good track record of youth leadership, but it is not the primary output of the organisation, however, with the funding, we will increase the projects or prominence of youth leadership within the arts. Would this be competitive?
Catherine Hillis
It's interesting. I'll chip off and then pass to Sam, because this was something that we did discuss quite a bit when we were developing the fund. I guess we recognise that organisations will be at different places along their journey, it could well be they're organisations that are set up with young people that are absolutely all about youth-led work. There could be other organisations where perhaps they've done youth-led work, they've engaged young people, they're sharing power, but they're perhaps, you know, want to push their practice a bit further. And again, this is why we haven't put an exact definition in because we are interested in both approaches. We want there to be some solid track record. But if this is about pushing your practice further, then we would be open to that. Sam, have I represented that discussion correctly, please feel free to disagree?
Sam Purkis
Very well. I think again, just going off what Catherine said, it would simply come down to what that youth-led work looks like, how interesting, how worth your young people's time it is, what it's bringing that's either new or exciting or beneficial to the space.
Luna Dizon
Great.
22. There's a question here about would it be possible to allocate money for access needs.
I'm not sure if that as part of the programme or if that is in supporting you to apply. And if it's supporting you to apply to our programme, we do have accessibility-related support. So if there's any part of the application process that is a barrier to you applying, you can get in touch with us. And we can make alternative arrangements. And that includes also providing an access payment of up to £500 to contribute to help you with that. If it is a question about funding for support as part of the programme. So that's something that you want to take?
Catherine Hillis
Absolutely, yeah, very happy to for those costs to be built into access needs. One of the values of the Collective's values document available on our website is around accessibility and recognising that accessibility can cost money resource, human resource. And absolutely, we as Laura and Sam said before, we want work to be inclusive, so absolutely happy for those costs to be built in.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. The question here from Kayle:
23. Can we include incentives to the young people on our project or pay them?
Laura Lines
Yes, we'd be expecting that. And I think that is within the longer questions at proposal. We look at how do you compensate young people? Again, Sam, do you want to come in on this?
Sam Purkis
Yeah, like we understand different organisations will have sort of different resources available to do this. But yeah, that is something that is very important to us at the Collective is making sure that it is accessible. If young people can be paid, making sure it's accessible through transport costs or being able to be fed. Yeah, that's something that would be looked on as favourable.
Catherine Hillis
Absolutely.
Luna Dizon
I'm gonna ask Sally's question.
24. So they're midway through a grant with another funder and have a an application also with another funder. Their young people programme is five years old and there is much more young people who want to do the programme hence their determination to secure further resource. But do funders discuss who they fund before decision making? Would our multiple approaches to multiple funders cause concern? Even if we can make the project discrete, the youth-led voice development aspects would be mirrored across the bids, for example, I made sense of the question.
Catherine Hillis
Absolutely. I mean, yes, I'll perhaps kick off on this. We completely recognise that organisations have multiple funders and sometimes are applying to a range of funders for a similar project. That's not a problem. You know, there's a pragmatism here, I think, and we could certainly have a discussion if, say, for example, you're in the fortunate position of having two applications be successful and same piece of work. I guess that's something that we would discuss about how you'd want to allocate the funding. But I mean, I think we recognise people have a range of funders and sometimes are having to pursue different options at the same time.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. So I know, we've only got five minutes left. And we've got 20 open questions. We're definitely not going to get to all of those, but we will answer any that we missed afterwards and send you send you those afterwards.
Catherine Hillis
I'll take a couple quickly.
25. There was a question about if you have a current live grant with Esmée.
If you have a current grant with Esmée that finishes in the next 12 months, you can apply into this fund.
I thought somebody else asked would this stop you from applying again to Esmée. I mean, in general, organisations don't have two grants at the same time with Esmée. So I guess if you were successful for a grant through the Youth-Led Creativity funding programme, then you probably wouldn't be able to apply during that time for another grant as well. That's fair to say.
Laura Lines
Yes.
Catherine Hillis
Brilliant. Thank you. I hope that made sense.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. And there's a question here about track record.
26. So when you talk about a track record of youth-led creativity, will you be observing the consistency of that, our organisation had a long standing youth board and a past version of the youth programme. The youth programme had a hiatus to allow for research and development and building a new youth strategy that involves youth consultancy and youth voice. Would that break in delivery take away from our perceived track record, or make us ineligible to apply?
Laura Lines
Go to Sam
Luna Dizon
Sam, do you want to take that?
Sam Purkis
I think the short answer is no, it wouldn't make you ineligible. Again, it sounds like you've said you do have a track record. So I think that's something to look at as a positive. And we'd maybe if you have a website or something like that we'd maybe look at what that work was if there's any information about it. But yeah, short answer, no.
Laura Lines
I think we'd be interested to hear about the learnings. It sounds like you've obviously done some strategic stop, start and review. And so I guess if there's critical learning that's come out of that process, I think that's useful to hear about in the questions at that expression of interest stage in terms of how they are youth-led.
Luna Dizon
Cool, thank you. I don't know if there are questions that you've seen also, that you would like to take, and that includes you, Sam. I'm conscious that we've only got, like a couple of minutes, and possibly maybe one more question that we can answer.
Laura Lines
27. There was one about a large housing association.
Again, I think all this comes down to your access your reach, your inclusivity and the impact of your youth-led creative work. And the quality of that is what we'd be considering. So it's not an immediate no, but I think it's looking at it in the round, and obviously against other application that we receive and how the quality and impact and regional inclusivity stacks up.
Luna Dizon
Thank you.
Catherine Hillis
Sam, were there any questions that you saw that particularly resonated?
Sam Purkis
There's one from Gavin asking:
28. Does the youth leadership need to be formalised? Or can it be more co-designed? Does it have to be a youth board?
I guess the answer is no. There's maybe an answer to many of the questions asked but it's really about you as an organisation and members in the organisation being very honest with yourselves about whether your work is centering young people and how it does the co-design. That can be a bit of a buzzword so we'd be looking for real specificity and what your interpretation of co-designing is.
Luna Dizon
Thank you. Maybe one more question. And this is from Leanne:
29. Will the fund help to cover funding a young person through a qualification as part of a youth leadership apprentice and a view to take this into leading a sustainable project.
Catherine Hillis
We definitely wouldn't exclude that. I would encourage you once again to look back at the criteria around track record in engaging young people from underrepresented communities and prioritising the joy and care of young people, and arts and creativity as a tool. So I would encourage you to look back at those because that's what the Collective will be scoring applications against. And just to check in on that, but as a general principle, yes, there would be no problem with supporting a young person's qualification.
Thanks and further resources
Luna Dizon
Thank you. And we do just have one minute left. So we're going to start wrapping up. In the presentation slides, the last slide has some links to further support and resources, including a link to accessibility-related support. And there's links to other useful funding sources, which has funding directories. And there is a link also for other types of resources like fundraising, legal communications and strategy, just in case that's helpful. Again, we will answer all the other questions that have been put to us and I will send you an email with the recording, the transcript, and additional questions answered. There is also in the presentation and the last slide, there is an email address that you can submit your questions to if there are other questions if you need clarification on anything, or there's a question that you didn't manage to ask.
Catherine Hillis
Yeah, brilliant. So time to wrap up. But first of all, just huge thanks to Sam for joining us today. And for all of his insight into the co-design process, huge thanks to Nana and Altan, to Laura to Luna and to Alison, Heather and Francesca behind the scenes. And most of all, huge thanks to you for coming along, for your interest in this new funding programme, for your questions that will be great for us to reflect on and think about as we get those answers back out to you. And yeah, thanks for your interest and thanks for coming along.