Grants database

The Multi Story Orchestra is a professional orchestra which aims to widen access to high-quality classical music through performances and participatory projects. They perform in car parks around the UK, bringing together hundreds of local young people to perform through partnerships with local arts and community organisations and schools in Peckham, Gloucester and Coventry. This grant supports the implementation of a new staffing structure which will integrate community-led approaches into Multi Story’s work and improve diversity across the organisation’s staff, musicians and participants.

Stepping Out is the UK’s leading mental health theatre company. They produce a wide range of work on mental health themes and are open to people who have used mental health services and their allies. This grant underpins Stepping Out’s core programmes supporting older mental health service users. Stepping Out will develop their ability to deliver hybrid and digital working alongside a live theatre and in-person offer.

Replay Theatre Company develops and tailors theatre experiences to engage and inspire key audiences from their early-years programme, to primary school age children of all abilities and backgrounds, as well as teenagers journeying into adulthood, and children and young people with diverse, complex, and multiple disabilities. This grant supports Replay’s specialist theatre programme ​‘UP!’ through which they will deliver and evaluate new, innovative arts-based activities for neurodiverse and disabled young people.

Ort Gallery is an artist-led exhibition space in Birmingham with the social mission to facilitate dialogue in the community. This grant supports Ort to test equitable approaches to organisational governance and programme design with local Black and Muslim communuity groups through their applied Research and Development project ​‘Warmth’. They will share their resulting methodology publicly in order to ensure transparency and allow others to build on or critique their work as part of their ambition to be a model for exposing inequalities in the arts sector using care and empathy.

OpenUp Music’s mission is to make orchestras accessible to young disabled musicians in the UK. They help special schools set up accessible orchestras and lead the National Open Youth Orchestra (NOYO), the world’s first disabled-led national youth orchestra. This grant supports OpenUp to continue leading NOYO and work with consortium partners to expand provision, deliver their first performances and improve NOYO’s support for members.

Northern Heartlands is a new independent charity which builds on the Great Place Scheme in County Durham. They work with communities in rural and post-industrial County Durham using arts, culture and creativity to build confidence and bring about change. This grant supports Northern Heartlands to build on the work of the Great Place Scheme through a programme of activity in Dene Valley. They will also test a place-based socially engaged approach in another rural community in south-west County Durham.

NoFit State is the UK’s leading large-scale contemporary circus company, producing professional touring productions and a wide variety of community, training, and education projects for people of all ages. This grant supports NoFit State’s co-creation work with local communities in Cardiff and South Wales in order to bring community voice and leadership into the organisation. Learning will then be shared through the organisation’s sector support work.

Museum of Colour (MoC) is a heritage and creativity social enterprise. It is building a digital museum to explore the contribution made by People of Colour to the nation’s film, television and art, through a series of digital collections and responses from 1766 to present. This grant supports a partnership between MoC and The Bodleian Library in Oxford. MoC will curate an exhibition of contentious objects linked to racial and cultural injustice and colonialism alongside academics, diverse local communities and artists. The work will aim to reframe the narrative and encourage change in the way heritage is interpreted and presented.

Mortal Fools is a creative learning company and the only organisation in the North East exclusively co-creating theatre and drama with, by and for young people. They specialise in social-change theatre production and drama projects by children and young people co-creating with professional theatre artists. This grant provides core support for organisational staff including four new employed artist roles, to enable Mortal Fools to better target its support and improve its practice and organisational sustainability.

Many Minds is a member-led mental health and performance charity. They run workshops and make high quality contemporary performance with people with lived experiences of mental ill-health. This grant underpins core salaries for the organisation’s expanded support team and project evaluation, in order to sustain growth and meet growing demand for activities.

International Curators Forum (ICF) publicly promotes the work of cultural practitioners by developing artistic and curatorial practice and discourse about contemporary visual art. They focus on the social impact of the visual arts across issues and borders by creating various avenues to empower diverse communities. This grant supports ICF to shift to digital working and host a 12-month Diasporic Curatorial Animateur fellowship for an emerging curator to animate and activate its archive. This work will be supported by new freelance posts to increase digital capacity and implement integrated digital, marketing and audience development strategies.

Create Equity devise, design and deliver projects and research on the arts and creative industries in order to address market failures in grant funding, impact capital and venture capital. Through the pilot Create Equity Fund (CEF), they aim to redress the imbalance in arts funding by supporting a new generation of Black, Asian and minoritised artists and creative entrepreneurs. This grant supports the further development of the CEF’s vision, leadership, and fundraising ready for official launch.