This page has the transcript of the Youth-Led Creativity Q&A webinar held on 16 July 2026. There are also links to watch the recording. See also our FAQ for the programme, which we will keep updating.
Webinar recording and download the presentation
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Speakers
- Naima Khan, Funding Manager, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
- Daniel Mapatac, Involving Young People Collective
- Chelbi Hillan, Involving Young People Collective
- Catherine Hillis, Director of A Fairer Future, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
- Luna Dizon, Communications Lead (Q&A support)
Welcome
Naima
Hi everybody. My name is Naima. My pronouns are she/her and I'm a funding manager at Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. I'm just going to give a quick introduction to myself and my colleagues and then I'll share some slides and we can go through them and talk about the Youth-led Creativity Fund.
So I mentioned that my pronouns are she, her. I'm A South Asian Muslim woman. I'm wearing a hijab, which is white and has blue flowers on it. And I'm wearing a blue T-shirt as well. I'm going to introduce you to my colleagues, Chelbi and Dan, who are from the Involving Young People Collective. My colleague, Catherine, who's on Q&A duty. So she's in the chat box answering your questions. And my colleagues, Gloria and Nana, who are on BSL interpretation. I'm going to jump into the slides now, and Chelbi, Dan, we will pass them between ourselves. Chelbi and Dan, when you come on, feel free to introduce yourselves.
Okay, bear with me as I get these up on my screen. Oh, okay, thank you. So welcome to the webinar. I mentioned that I'm going to be talking you through our Youth-led Creativity Fund. I'm going to start by talking about Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. Chelbi and Dan will talk to you about the Involving Young People Collective. We'll talk a little bit about why we're focusing on youth-led creativity for this fund, the funding programme itself, the application process, and then there should be some time at the end to talk through questions and answers.
Right, so the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation is an independent grant maker. We're based in London and we fund organisations across the UK. We aim to improve our natural world, to secure a fairer future for ourselves and strengthen the bonds across the UK through communities. I'll hand over to Dan or Chelbi to talk about the Young People Collective.
Dan
Thank you, Naima. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Dan. My pronouns are he/him. I'm a young Filipino man. I have short black hair, dark brown eyes, almost black. I'm wearing a white shirt. I'm quite smiley, and I'm sitting at my friend's kitchen table in North Wales. And I'll let Chelbi introduce herself.
Chelbi
Hi everyone, my name's Chelbi. I'm a white Scottish woman from Glasgow with curly hair. I'm currently sitting in my house enjoying the sunshine in Glasgow, wearing a grey top.
Dan
So, the Involving Young People Collective, or IYPC, is a group of young people working alongside Esmée Fairbairn to influence how decisions are made and how power is shared. Over the past three years, we've worked across different parts of the foundation, helping to design and deliver different funds. And for the Youth-led Creativity Fund, I'll let maybe Chelbi talk about that a little bit more.
Chelbi
So Dan and I have been part of Youth-Led Creativity Fund. This is the second round. So we had a previous round where we funded some different organisations. And for this round of the project, we really wanted to look back at everything we achieved with the first fund, and really reflect on how we designed that. So we're excited to share with you later some of the criteria and the influence of where that came from. But it's been a passion project for us over the past few years.
About the Youth-Led Creativity Fund and criteria
Naima
Can someone move to the next slide? Okay, super, thank you. This slide just tells you where the Youth-led Creativity Fund sits. The aim within the organisation is called A Fairer Future. The priority for the aim is arts and creativity making change. And the long-term outcome for the Youth-led Creativity Fund is to support a youth-led culture and creativity, which enhances young people's lives and enables them to influence change in their communities and/or wider society.
Why youth-led creativity? Well, this fund is really focused on building on young people's existing power to make change. We wanted to use creativity to support young people to make their lives better, to build up their careers and to change the world around them. The work, the fund is going to focus on youth-led initiatives, youth-led practice. We have budgeted to spend 2 million pounds total on these grants. And we imagine that they're going to be spent between 12 to 16 organisations over the course of the rest of 2026 and 2027.
We're going to be looking to fund project costs and core costs. The grants will all be multi-year grants. The maximum grant that we're likely to grant is 150,000 pounds for the duration of the grant.
Alongside the grant making programme is a learning programme and it's facilitated by a learning partner that we already work with. It runs alongside the timetable for funding and organisations who are successful in their grant applications hopefully will be able to engage in peer support learning. It's very collaboration-focused. It's very open to your ideas about what you would like to learn about from each other. We support organisations to develop and share their models of practice, and this is a key aim of the learning programme. We also support organisations to participate with compensation for participation.
Can I hand it back to Chelbi and Dan to talk through this very beautiful manifesto which is guiding the kind of creation and development of the Youth-Led Creativity Fund?
Dan
Yeah. So alongside designing the fund, we also developed this manifesto to set out what we believe youth leadership needs in order to thrive. It’s not intended to be like a fixed definition or a checklist, but it's more of a reflection on what we've learned through our own experiences, through our like conversations with other young people and our wider work. I guess at its heart, the manifesto recognises that youth leadership is really complex. It can grow from activism, from creativity, from community and joy, but it needs more than just young people's passion. And we recognise that young people need the space, the resources, the platforms and the opportunities to connect with one another. It also asks funders to think differently about their role, not just funding the work, but creating the spaces to listen, learn and work alongside young people making the change. I think my favourite point is youth leadership happens when young people have space. Through this process of us as young people, we saw that leadership doesn't always look like being the loudest person in the room or having a fancy title. They can come from young people when we're given the time, the trust, and the freedom to explore those ideas, to challenge our own assumptions and others' assumptions and shape decisions in our own way.
Chelbi
Thanks, Dan. And yeah, we come up with this manifesto through quite a lot of discussions we had as a team. So some of them internally and our Involving Young People Collective and then ones with Esmée Fairbairn as well, where we really reflected on the learnings from the last round of this fund and kind of dug deeper to understand ourselves, what we meant by different definitions or what we wanted to see come out of the project. And something that stood out for me in this one is that youth creativity flourishes when it's well resourced and when the people who do it have a platform. So making sure that we can deliver this funding to people so they can provide opportunities for young people to have creative outlets, share joy in their community. And the platform aspect doesn't necessarily mean being like really popular on Instagram or having a big presence in the sector. It's more about how you can connect with other organisations or other young people or your community to share the learnings and the outcomes of this project.
So we're going to talk you through a little bit of the type of work we want to support, and just to give some examples for you. So first of all, we want to support work that creates change for young people using arts and creativity, and to use it as a tool for these young people to use their own voice and to influence change in their world around them and our shared communities. So for example, this could look like being intentional about exploring and expanding what youth-led creativity looks like in a curious and open-minded way. It can be using arts and creative practice to create change. And that should be identified by the young people or led by the young people. So how they want to use arts and creativity to make change in their community and also in themselves. and build artistic and creative leadership in young people so they can be artists and change makers. And I'll pass over to Dan for the next one.
Dan
Thank you. So the next one is youth-led, where young people hold real and meaningful power to shape decisions, resources, and direction at every stage of a project or organisation. So what this could look like is considers who holds power over decisions, money, strategy, priorities, and direction, and goes beyond involving young people and is moving towards ownership by young people. Is experimental, imaginative, challenging, and innovative in their approach to youth leadership and practice. Involves adults, but only if they're willing to be challenged, let go of certainty and control, accept risk and discomfort, and support rather than direct.
I feel like a great example from the previous cohort of this is Comics Youth, where young people are being supported to run a marginal publishing house and develop their own publications and campaign for wider change across the publishing industry, where like young people aren't just like contributing ideas, but they're leading and influencing the sector around them.
Chelbi
Thanks, Dan. We also wanted to support organisations which centres the voices of young people that are underrepresented in the arts and culture. So that could be people who are deaf, disabled, neurodivergent, from communities experiencing racial inequity, people who are economically disadvantaged, people who identify as LGBT plus, have migration or care experience and live outside of a big city. Some of these, actually, I think all of these were in our last kind of criteria as well. So we still wanted to focus in on the same communities and we wanted to really give the chance for people who may not typically be able to participate in the arts and creativity opportunities to be able to do that and to benefit from this fund. So this could look like being committed to representative of and accountable to the community that it serves and then particularly for those who face barriers due to systemic inequity.
Dan
And then prioritises joy and care of young people. This one was a really important one for us as the Collective. And that means taking an intentional and holistic approach that goes beyond safeguarding. So what this could look like is to show an understanding of care and joy that is shaped by young people and that is at the centre of their approach. Thinks about all aspects of well-being, so physical, emotional, financial and spiritual. Young people being supported as a whole person, not just of what they do, making spaces for difficult conversations, shared and different experiences and real connection, and show that fun and time together matters without needing special aims or results, and making efforts to bring joy and positive energy into the work and in the environment.
I think one example that I can really think of from the past cohort is Cheshire Young Carers. they support young carers to lead and design creative workshops, but also create opportunities for them to experience joy and childhood and not as like just as to develop skills or to demonstrate outcomes.
Chelbi
And finally, we wanted to support collaborative and organisations who are collaborative and committed to learning with others to develop youth led practice. So we felt it was really important that organisations would be willing to work with each other, to learn from each other, but also to learn within their organisation from the people they represent. And something that was quite important to us is the learning community. the different organisations come together, they share the work they're doing and they can learn from each other and also helps us as a funder to learn from them. So it's something, a cultural learning is really important to us. So for example, this could look like understanding your role in the community as well as a wider ecosystem and the importance of collaboration in creating change more widely. And that might mean that if you're an arts organisation, maybe you work with another organisation who do more campaign work, or it could be a whole different range of examples. And also that you're ambitious and committed to contributing to the development of youth-led practice beyond your own organisation. And you have examples of collaboration and or learning with others about youth-led practice.
Naima
Right, I'm going to take you through some of the criteria and eligibility for this fund. So organisations that we want to support will only be constituted organisations. And this means charities, community interest companies, community benefit societies, social enterprises. But you need to have things like a governing document, for example. So if your organisation is not a registered charity, We will assess the governance in terms of risk of disproportionate personal benefit. And if you've got any more questions on that, it's probably worth checking out our frequently asked questions on the kinds of organisations that we support.
Arts and creativity and culture is the main focus for this one. So if the work is centred in things like music, film, performance arts, we'd love to hear from you. Same with literature and publishing, design and animation, not limited to those, but those are examples of the kind of creativity and arts we're talking about. We're interested in organisations whose primary activities sit within the creative sectors.
We're also only funding work that is based in and taking place in Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales. And organisations who apply should have an annual turnover of more than 50,000 pounds.
I might pause here and take a few questions about eligibility because I can see some in the Q&A. If it's okay, Catherine, can I bring you in to talk to answer one of the questions from someone who says, if we already have a grant with Esmée Fairbairn, can we apply for this fund?
Catherine
Yes, of course. We've just actually typed an answer in on that one. It's very unusual for us to give two grants to one organisation a time, but perhaps as your current grant comes to an end, you might want to consider applying into this fund. It is open and rolling. In general, we only accept more than one application for funding if there isn't any duplication in terms of the programme work so that we're not being asked at the same cost twice. or if the organisation is acting as a lead in an application on behalf of a partnership and the other application is for funding that the organisation in its own right and for its own needs. So hope that explains it. There's a bit more information in the chat as well. Thank you.
Naima
Great. And I'm sure we can add that to the frequently asked questions if it's not already covered.
I'm gonna take another question which says, we are a youth charity based in the city centre of Dundee. However, a very significant amount of our work is arts and creativity focused with young people. Are we eligible?
A youth charity with a focus on arts and creativity led by young people would be eligible to apply. If you've got any worries about why you might not be able to feel free to e-mail us at youthledcreativity@esmeefairbairn.org.uk and the e-mail is going to be on the screen in a moment. But my instinct is there's nothing in that description that would make you ineligible to apply.
And then we have another question that says, does it have to be new work or can it be continued research and development of an existing project? I think it's fine for it to be continued work if you especially, it doesn't have to be, but if you're thinking of deepening the impact of existing work or scaling the impact of existing work, it definitely doesn't exclude you.
What we won't fund
I'm going to pause and go on to the next slide and then we'll take some more questions. So this slide talks about what we won't fund and this applies across Esmée Fairbairn. We're not going to support work that is not legally charitable. If you're wondering whether your work is legally charitable or not, we're talking about the Charity Commission definition of what is legally charitable. So you may want to check out the link in the slides that you've been sent, which has a description of charitable purposes.
We won't be funding anything that is based on that is for academic research. So a project that is designed to advance academic research would not be funded. We won't be funding anything in healthcare.
We won't be funding anything in independent education. So that's work that takes place or is delivered by fee paying schools. We won't be funding anything that is primarily the responsibility of statutory authorities or anything to do with the advancement of religion.
And these types of costs are costs that we won't be funding through this fund. So capital costs, are anything to do with building work or renovations or equipment. But you can look at other ways that Esmée Fairbairn supports those costs on our website. We won't be making grants for less than 30,000 pounds, and we won't be making grants to individuals.
How to apply
Right, this is a little bit about the nuts and bolts of how to apply. So the first stage of applying involves applicants submitting an expression of interest. The expression of interest is four questions plus a chance to share your website and your social media accounts. You can share that with us in a written format using the form on our website. You can submit it via the website in video format if that's a creative expression that would work for you or audio format if that's a creative expression that would work for you. We gather all those applications, we run them through an assessment process in a team combined with Esmée Fairbairn staff like myself and my Involving Young People Collective colleagues like Dan and Chelbi who you just met.
We'll talk through is this a fit to the strategy of the fund. If we feel like it's not, you'll get a declination e-mail that should have a couple of lines of feedback to explain why your application has been declined. Anything that we feel is a great fit to the strategy of the fund. We'll move on to the next stage, which is a conversation again with someone from Esmée Fairbairn and Involving Young People Collective consultants like Dan and Chelbi. And we'll ask questions about what you've already submitted, asking you to expand on points you've already mentioned to us.
We might ask you things like, How is joy and care centred in your work and what really lights you up about the projects or the core work that you're doing? We'll also ask you things like, What are the risks and challenges associated with this work? We'll take all our notes from that conversation. We'll run it through another set of assessment questions where we ask again, is this a fit to the strategy of the fund or is it not? If it's not, you'll get a declination e-mail which has a bit more substantial feedback in it.
If it is, we'll invite you to the third stage where it says more information. And this stage just asks you to submit documents, which hopefully you already have things like safeguarding policies, Your governing document will ask you for your income and expenditure in the previous financial year, the current financial year, the next one, just to give us an idea of who you are in your position.
And then myself and my colleagues will go away and write up what we call a funding recommendation and submit it to a panel for approval. The panel will include senior management team at Esmée Fairbairn and trustees at Esmée Fairbairn. They'll read through your application and they'll give us the thumbs up or the thumbs down on the decision. And then if successful, applicants will get a grant offer with terms and conditions. That's it for the process. I really hope that's been useful.
And if you're coming away feeling like we need a bit more information, there's full guidance on the website. If you're coming away feeling like I'm not sure we're eligible, drop us a line and see if you are. If you're feeling like we're probably not in a position to apply this year, you can always consider applying next year. And anything else, check out our website or e-mail us at youthledcreativity@esmeefairbairn.org.uk. We will put the e-mail up on the screen, I think, in a moment. Shall we run through some of these questions in the Q&A? Luna, is that a good idea?
Q&A
Luna
Yes, hi everyone, thank you for putting in your questions already. I'm going to try and group a few of these questions, questions where they're quite similar. So it's a question about the areas that we're focusing on. So there was a question that came in advance and is also here about their organisation. Does an organisation need to be registered in Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales? They deliver work in Scotland and they have a hub there, but their registered office is in England.
And there is also a question about the decision not to fund within England and if there will be another fund available. Just seeing if there's any other similar questions.
And then the third one, they are Wales based and all their work is is Wales based, but one of their collaborators is England based. Is that okay?
Naima
Thank you for the questions. So registered in England with a hub in Scotland. We're looking to support work that is registered in the nation that the work is taking place in and based in the nation that the work is taking place in. So we're looking for organisations that are registered in Scotland, working in Scotland and based in Scotland. The decision not to fund in England. So the last iteration of the fund, which launched in 2024, has funded majority organisations in England. We wanted to balance this out a bit and send a message to our colleagues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to say, we really want you to see yourself in this and feel like you can apply and that this money has been earmarked for your work. Will there be a similar fund in the future? The answer is maybe. The Involving Young People Collective at Esmée Fairbairn have designed this fund. They came up with the criteria, the direction, the vision, and we will leave it to them to design the next iteration of the fund as well. So that's not as clear as a yes or no, but it will definitely be on the table for discussion. Did I miss anything?
Luna
Yeah, I was just going to say, I don't know if Dan or Chelbi want to also add to particularly the question about the decision not to fund in England. Do you want to add anything to it? Just from your perspective.
Chelbi
Yeah, I'm sure we'll both be able to help with that one. So we did the Fund last time. We had a lot of applications and some of them were from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. But when we'd done the scoring, it came down to a lot of England-based organisations. We were reflecting on this when we were designing this round and we were thinking if the organisations in England have more like funding available to them, is it like fair to compare them in like a scoring system and we really wanted to see what would come out of working with organisations that weren't based in England this time to see if we would learn some different things through the Learning Partner Programme and how that might influence the way we would design the next one. Because there was a lot of great organisations based in those nations that didn't make it to get funded last time because we had so many applications. So I don't know if, Dan, there's anything you want to add.
Dan
No, I think you covered most of it, but I think it's like this one wasn't intended to exclude anyone, but it was about recognising that like UK wide funding can often become England centered by default. So it was kind of to almost balance that.
Naima
Luna, there was one question that I, you shared and I didn't answer. It was based in Wales, working in Wales, but has a collaborator in England. So my instinct is, it should be fine. What we would be looking at is what's the purpose of selecting a collaborator in England? What do they bring to the work that you're doing? Help us understand the rationale behind that decision. And I don't think it would exclude you from applying to the fund to have a collaborator not in the country that you're based in and working in. But if you're feeling like I don't really want to apply unless I have a really clear answer on this, send us an e-mail and a few details and we'll definitely give you as much information back as we can.
Luna
Thank you. I'm going to move on to another question, which I think you started to answer, Naima, which was about the definition of a young person and if there is a specific age range you're looking to target. But I also just wanted to also add a question here that I've lost. Okay, maybe start with that one.
Naima
Okay, so for us, a young person is someone who's 14 to 30 years old. We've had so many really brilliant conversations with the Involving Young People Collective about all the different forms of youth-led practice that can exist and that are being developed. And we know that some of them involve very intergenerational working, very intentionally, very purposefully to work in that way. We're definitely open to hearing about those projects. And if you've chosen a more intergenerational way of working, I think we would absolutely love to hear from you. What we're looking for is projects that are designed, delivered, evaluated by the young people for the young people. And the main reason that we chose 14 plus is because we felt that there are youth-led projects that would look very different for younger children compared to older children. And we're going to focus on the older children for this round. And the ways that younger children and older children lead projects is also very different. I want to support young people who are 14 plus in this instance. I hope that answers it.
Luna
Thank you. There's a similar question from somebody here who, in addition to asking about their preferred age range, they asked what legacy based outcomes are a priority. So maybe there's something here about, you know, the development of youth led practice that the panel wants to touch on.
Naima
So with legacy-based outcomes, I mean the legacy of the funding, what should the funding achieve long term? Chelbi and Dan, do you want to come in on that? Oh, I'm happy to take it. Chelbi.
Chelbi
I was going to say, if you start, I can add on if that's okay.
Naima
Yeah, great. So we're looking at a set of values that the fund was based on. Have a look on our website to get a bit more information on our perspective on those values, but I'll just pull out a couple to mention now. So one is, we'd love to support work that is deeply rooted in the communities, which means having a process around accountability, honesty, connection to one's communities. If this is, for example, work that you're already doing, but you want to deepen, the legacy outcome would be, we want to deepen our roots into communities, we want to strengthen our roots and communities, that would be great. I think a priority for us is youth-led practice. So if you're looking at a certain model of youth-led practice that you want to, that you're already using, you'd like to experiment with it, develop it, strengthen it, deepen it. We'd love to hear, we'd love to see that as a legacy outcome of the funding. Don't know if colleagues want to come in on anything else.
Dan
Sure. I think for me as well, it's like, I was really passionate about having like a stronger and more like connected ecosystem of like youth-led creativity across Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, and having young people have like more lasting power and organisations being, I guess, better equipped to share the decision-making with the young people.
Chelbi
Yeah, and one of the other things we've spoken a lot about is like, intergenerational collaboration. So is it like it could be older young people or older people working with young people? And we were having our discussions, we were talking about how youth led could be very different for different organisations or based on different groups that people are serving, like what the needs of that group are. So for one group of young people, it could mean they make all the decisions and they like to be involved in that way. But for other projects for young people, they could still be youth-led and influenced by the decisions made by the young people, but maybe they take a kind of more laid-back role in project delivery or things like that because they just want to be there to have the creative space and have joy in that sense.
Luna
Thanks all. So the next question is around the focus on arts and creativity. So again, I'm just going to read out a few questions on the same theme. So a question here from Elaine. If we're a charity whose primary focus is not arts, creativity and culture, but the projects they do are youth led and focused on this, can they apply?
There's a question here about, what about groups that primarily work with vulnerable young people? Would they need to collaborate with groups with a creativity focus?
And then third question, we are a community-based youth organisation whose main focus is youth activities, not creative arts. Although we do activities such as LARPing, Dungeons and Dragons, would they be eligible to apply?
And then the last one here from Julie. Their organisation isn't an arts organisation, but they would love to develop some youth-led arts programmes. Would they be eligible?
Naima
Thank you. So I'll jump in on Elaine's question. We're looking for both. So organisations that are very youth-led, very focused on youth-led practice, and whose primary focus is arts, creativity and culture. I don't think it should prevent you from applying necessarily, but I want to do some expectation management that we're really looking to fund organisations that are youth-led and primarily focused on arts and culture. Luna, sorry, remind me of the other questions. It was one about where a description of the creativity, which was like LARPing and Dungeons and Dragons and that sort of stuff. That's really, really wonderful. I don't think it would fall into our definition of arts and creativity.
We're looking really at putting funding back into the arts and creativity culture sector. We feel like this has been decimated over previous years and we'd really like the 2 million pounds that we've set aside for this fund to focus on developing arts and culture work that is led by young people.
And then there was a question about working with vulnerable groups of young people and doing youth creativity work. I think, colleagues, please do correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I think we don't see it as two separate things. So work that is being done by vulnerable young people who are, and that's leading the projects and those projects are arts and culture and creativity, we wouldn't exclude them.
But if you're feeling like we don't have quite a track record in arts and culture work, but we do have a great track record in supporting vulnerable young people. I would say yes, collaborating with an arts and culture organisation might be the way to go, but this also feels quite specific, so I'd encourage you to e-mail us and we can have a little e-mail exchange about what stage the work is at, what stage the collaboration is at, and give you a bit of advice on whether to apply or not, or the question might be when to apply.
Luna
Thanks, Naima. There's just one more here. They're not an arts organisation, but they are a youth-led organisation and they deliver creative industry qualifications and they want to focus on computers, computer arts and gaming, which I think is similar to an arts you've already given. But do you want to take that?
Naima
Yeah, I think gaming absolutely is part of the current and future arts and culture. creative industries in the UK. So work where young people are designing, delivering, evaluating projects related to gaming, I think would be eligible, yes.
Luna
And, sorry, sticking with the theme, and does heritage count as part of culture?
Naima
Right, like museums.
Luna
I would say so maybe like, yeah. This is a question from Jane. Jane, if you want to add more to your question around that, then please do and we'll come back to you.
Naima
To say my instinct is yes, that a lot of youth-led creative projects within the heritage sector would sit within how we understand arts and culture. But it does again feel a bit specific, Jane. So could you e-mail us and will give you a firmer answer, particularly because Esmée Fairbairn does support various arts and culture funds that are museum focused. So I might have a slightly different answer on e-mail than I'm giving now, but right now I'm thinking I don't think heritage would be excluded. But yeah, if you could e-mail, that'd be great.
Luna
Thank you. And I'm just going to ask this question from Andrea about collaborations with schools. So the question is, will collaborations with schools be accepted?
Naima
I'm wondering if Catherine can come in on this. My understanding is probably not.
Catherine
Hello, everyone. I'm just going to jump in on this. Yeah, part of our motivation in setting up youth-led creativity at the start was to reach young people who perhaps aren't having a great experience at school or want to pursue this work outside of school in a non-formal context. So we're not focusing on work that is based in schools. It may be that as an organisation, you do work in schools and this is alongside or you recruit through schools. But we're not primarily looking to fund programmes exclusively funded in schools. But the most important thing is if you look at the five criteria the IYPC colleagues have developed and the explanations that are on there about how they define those criteria and what they're most wanting to see. That's that's the most important thing. And if it, if in your context that means working through schools, then I think that that would be acceptable. But Dan, Chelbi, put me right.
Dan
I think just on the wider point about like creative work, sorry, just to detach a little bit. I think for this fund, like creativity doesn't necessarily need to be your organisation's like whole identity, but it should be central to like the work that you're proposing. So like not something just added at the end to like fit into the fund. I think from what we were thinking, it's like how young people use creativity to like explore issues or like tell their own stories or like build and influence change. Chelbi, did you have anything that you wanted to add?
Chelbi
No, I think you captured it well done.
Luna
Thanks both. There's a good question for the two of you here from Claire. Could you give examples of projects you've funded, well, and Naima, you've funded that work with young people who are at the very beginning stages of stepping forward to take the lead? They find that many young people they work with due to their background or circumstances are very shy or concerned about expressing their opinions to help them make decisions. It would be great to get funding to help them move from this place forward rather than working with young people who already have the skills needed to lead already. The smallest steps from an outside perspective can be huge for that individual.
Dan
I think the one that sticks in my mind is I spoke about earlier, Comics Youth. So the funding helped to support their marginal change maker program, which upskilled, I think it was around 80 young people over three years to run a publishing house. And through that program, they had access to mentorship, to training, wellbeing, support and coaching. And they were supported to go through their own journey. I'm trying to think of other ones. I know that Cheshire Young Carers was also a really good one. because it was working with young carers in Cheshire to be able to advocate and influence positive change within their own community. And in addition, doing quite creative things alongside that. Chelbi, have you got any that you can think of at the moment?
Chelbi
No, sorry, I was going in and out for me a little bit there. The signal, sorry, I missed what you said at the end.
Dan
And then, sorry. Another one that I can think of as well is Care to Culture. So there was like, I think it was called like a pathway plan, which supported like care experienced young people over like six months to like create their own like professional theatre show. And in that, the young people, they were consulted to shape their own development and inform all the decisions in that plan. So it wasn't that they were leading, but they were, I guess, supported to inform all the decisions.
Naima
If it's useful, Claire, some of the things that we might be looking at from an applicant who that is working with young people, like the ones you described, is what kind of power sharing is happening already? How are decisions being made? We talk a lot with the Involving Young People Collective and Esmée Fairbairn team have spoken a lot about what does it mean to understand the context in which applicants are working in. So we'll be looking at your application to see how can we understand what the context that Claire and her team are working in is, and how the power sharing with young people is happening already and how well developed the plans are to continue and develop that rather than this is a great idea. We'd need to see something just a little bit more than that in the application.
Luna
Thank you. The next question is, is it possible to discuss their project with someone at the foundation? They're all about equity and inclusion across interdisciplinary area of real world projects for 4 to 19 year olds. However, it doesn't fit into the box because no one is doing this in the UK. I'm not sure. I guess that further that initial bit of the question, I think I feel like we might need a bit more information on the second part of the question. But is it possible to discuss the project with somebody at Esmée?
Naima
Yes, I'd say, drop us an e-mail, and we'll definitely get back to you. It would be useful in that e-mail to include a little bit of the context. Any very specific questions you have about the fund. Anything you feel that isn't answered in the frequently asked questions.
Luna
Well, we will do, too, like it's really great, you know, getting all of your questions as we will try to update our frequently answered questions on the website. And if we, if there are ways that we can make our guidance clearer. We'll do that too. So this is really helpful. Thank you again. So there's a question here from Caroline. They work with vulnerable young people, but would like to introduce the arts as a way for them to share their lived experience and advocate for change using legislative theatre. Will that be considered?
Naima
Thanks, Caroline. Dan and Chelbi, please feel free to jump in. I think what we will be looking at is how much of this is coming from young people and do they see this as the best way to affect the kind of change that they want to see.
Chelbi
Yeah, for sure. It would be an eligible application. It's just like it would come down to like what exactly what Naima said, like how you plan to do that is what we would be assessing. So the idea is eligible.
Naima
Yeah.
Dan
I think, like I said before, you don't need to be a traditional arts organisation. Like the definition of creativity, how it's quite like broad. But I think the question is like, are young people generally leading the change or like the creative activity? And is that an important part of the change the work is trying to make rather than just like an additional point?
Luna
Thank you. So the next question comes from Wendy. They work with young and young adult carers in the Highlands. They have done workshops in the past around various arts and employability. They're not necessarily youth-led, but they incorporate the carers feedback in their planning of future events and services. Would that fit the criteria or would they need to show more youth-led practice?
Naima
Wendy, I think that's a great beginning place in terms of youth and practice. But we would be focusing more on organisations that have developed a really intentional, purposeful practice that shifts power to young people in the decision making. And I understand that it's probably quite a complex type of work that you do. And there may be some places where you absolutely can shift power towards young people and some places where that would be less appropriate. That's fine. That goes back to the contextual thing I was mentioning, but we would need to see that this, that the programmes that are being delivered are really driven by young people and that the power is in their hands as much as possible. Yeah, I hope that answers that.
Luna
Thank you. I don't know if you want to, if you want to also talk a little bit about what the learning programme is. and what that involves and what you hope to get out of it, the organisations and the development of youth-led practice.
Naima
Yeah, happy to. So the learning programme that runs alongside the grants programme has been running since 2024 or 2025 and it's a chance for the funded organisations to come together, share their practices, visit each other, develop their ideas, ask questions, and get into the kind of knotty bits of all of this where, for example, working with young people as participants has its own brilliant opportunities, rewards and challenges. Working with young people when they become new employees has its own set of brilliant opportunities and also challenges. So it's a chance to talk to each other about your context, about what you're working through, and in a kind of semi-structured way.
So there are structured opportunities for learning where we invite external speakers to come in and share information that they have and experience that they have about geographical context or working with specific groups or working in specific methodologies. And there's also a chance for organisations to initiate their own sort of site projects if they would like to.
We have a couple of organisations from the current cohort who are looking into what does it mean to have young trustees at a governance level within their organisations. And so we're supporting them with a little bit of resource to look into that, collaborate on that. I hope that gives you a little bit of an idea of the what the learning, what we hope to achieve with the learning programme. which is essentially more collaboration between organisations, really useful strategic collaboration, opportunities for learning, sharing and developing youth led practice.
Luna
Thanks, Naima. So there's only a few questions left, so we should get to all of them, which is amazing. Question from Daniel. Their organisation is youth-led and has a strong visual and performance arts core, but also does outdoor learning and youth clubs and leadership. They're members of the Youth Theatre Arts Scotland, and their first ever project was a drama club. they went on to apply. Does it sound like a fit?
Naima
I'm going to hand over to Dan and Chelbi.
Chelbi
Yeah, that definitely for me sounds like a good fit. Having a track record of being youth led and engaging in something like visual arts and performances sounds like that would be a really good fit. So yeah, it would be interesting to hear about that. I don't know if you have anything to add, Dan.
Dan
Yeah, I just wanted to caveat as well, we're not expecting organisations to arrive with like perfect youth-led practice. And you might not even use that term and you might be like at earlier stages of like thinking. But I think what matters is that there's genuine foundations of like shifting power to young people or like a willingness to give young people more meaningful power in the organisation and not just add like a youth advisory group onto like an otherwise like adult-led project. and we would want to understand how young people shape the ideas or make the decisions or influence the resources and be supported to lead in the ways that work for them.
Luna
So there's one more question here right now. So from Sam, would you fund work that takes place in a virtual setting as well as in person, for example, running some workshops or sessions via Zoom to bring together young people from a broader geographic area?
Naima
Dan and Chelbi, I think this is another one for you.
Dan
I think this is one that we might have to go back to the Collective and discuss that with because I'm not actually sure. Chelbi, do you have any thoughts around it?
Chelbi
Yeah, I think. like. It could work. I think a lot, I think all of them we funded in the past were based in person, but I can understand maybe for some more rural areas like geographical challenges, funding challenges, commitments of the young people that you are supporting, then I think like it would definitely be good to hear more from you and more about it and to see what that programme would look like, yeah.
Luna
Thank you. Go on, Naima.
Naima
Sorry, just to quickly jump in. I think there are also some contexts in which I can think that this would be a really great and appropriate way to run a youth-led project. So for example, if you're working with disabled young people, for whom a virtual environment would be really useful and accessible, I think great. If you're working with a group who are perhaps very marginalised and quite spread out. So thinking, for example, young LGBTQ+ people in rural areas where it's not easy to access the kind of resources that might be available in a big city, I can see why an online space would be really useful for that. So I just want to say I can see context in which we would get an application that was focused on virtual spaces and really understand the context and the purpose of it and be open to an application there.
Luna
Thank you. It's really helpful. So there's one more question. They are predominantly a creative organisation, but work regularly with youth-led organisations in their city on collaborative and wide-reaching projects that prioritise decision-making or meaningful contributions from young people. Could they apply for funding as a collaborative project between themselves and as a creative organisation and a more substantially youth-led group? Good question.
Naima
It's a really good question. I'm going to say, yes, you can apply as a collaborative project. What we would be looking for, though, is to what degree are the young people leading this work? And we definitely would like to see young people as more than participants and absolutely as leaders. So that is something that I think you should consider if you're planning on submitting as a collaborative project. How can you communicate to us the youth led element of the work that you're doing?
Luna
Thank you. I think that is actually all the questions. So I just wanted to share the final slide, which is in the in the slide deck, which has links to the full guidance and accessibility related support. We offer a Access payment of, I think it's up to 500 pounds or up to 650 pounds to help with accessibility. If there's any, if you're due to a disability, there's any part of the application process that's a barrier.
There are also other resources there in terms of other funding sources and useful sector resources. I know this has been a lot with lots of questions and lots of information. We will share the recording, the transcript, And any links that we've shared or organisations that we've mentioned. So you can have a look back at those.
And also you can see that on the slides, there's the e-mail address to youthledcreativity@esmeefairbairn.org.uk, which you can get in touch with any questions that we might have missed.
There is a final question here, sorry. from Derek about will the funding opportunity stop when all the funds are allocated, even when it's less than a year programme? So I guess it's about how we manage our budget really.
Naima
Yeah, we will try to make funds available through the duration, so from now until the end of 2027. We would not like to find ourselves in a position where we go, oh, all the money's been allocated within six months, we've got to close this programme. But what that does mean is that the standard for applications might get higher so that we are looking at a consistent level of assessment across the year, consistent level of budgeting across the year. It's not a year, it's a year and a half. But It won't be a situation where we go, the funds are spent, we have to close everything down. That would be not so great planning on our part. But we can probably get to a stage in the year where we would say it's now six months to the end of the programme. This would be the final time to get your applications in, given the time it takes to assess an application and make a decision.
Luna
It's really helpful. Thank you. That is like pretty much we've got about one more minute left. I don't know if the panel wants to just share some final words. And then Naima and you can wrap up.
Naima
Yeah, thank you so much. Oh, sorry, Dan and Chelbi, you go first.
Chelbi
No, I was just going to say, yeah, if you have any questions, like Naima said, feel free to e-mail them because we would love to hear from you, like, don't exclude yourself and just get in touch and yeah we really look forward to reading some of your applications.
Dan
Yeah thank you everyone for joining and yeah we're really looking forward to reading the applications and yeah hopefully you found this helpful.
Naima
Thanks so much, everyone. Please keep me in touch if you have more questions. We're happy to answer them. Thank you, Nana and Gloria and Catherine and Luna and Chelbi and Dan. Right, we will see you all soon, I hope.
Luna
Thanks, everyone.
Chelbi
Bye. Thank you. Bye.