Grants database

Creative Futures transforms the lives of vulnerable children and young people through high quality targeted arts programmes. Creative Futures will work with London Early Years Foundation (LEYF) nurseries to train Early Years Educators coming through LEYF’s apprenticeship and degree courses. The programme will support the development of creative, music-based practice, which will be geared particularly to helping young children progress in their Speech, Language and Communication skills and Social Emotional learning, as well as their music making and creativity.

Cap-a-Pie is a theatre company that inspires thinking and learning, bringing people together in a democratic creative process. Cap-a-Pie will work with children and young people attending schools in the East of Newcastle, and their teachers, to access in-depth nuanced understanding of complex material from different perspectives. Work will also support speaking and listening skills and activate critical thinking skills; this will enable greater engagement and progress with learning.

University of Atypical for Arts and Disability is a disabled-led sectoral arts organisation. This grant provides core costs and programme costs to enable them to deliver their strategic plan for 2023–28, including developing the Ledger Studio as a performing arts space and hub for D/​deaf, disabled and neurodiverse communities, and expanding its Arts Access and Disability Awards supporting best practice in inclusivity across ~30 arts organisations in Northern Ireland.

The Showroom is a contemporary art space focused on collaborative approaches to cultural production within its locality and beyond. This grant will enable The Showroom to recruit a full time Community Engagement Curator, to commission local artists for a mural on their building, and to facilitate action-research exploring their role in the community and thematic focus.

Phosphoros Theatre makes political theatre performed by refugee and asylum-seeking actors. They make and hold space for those with forced migration backgrounds to voice, reflect on and respond to their lived experience and create nationally touring productions. This grant provides core funding to support an ongoing full time Producer role, an ongoing part time Head of Community Engagement role, and the creation of a new role for a young person with lived experience of forced migration.

Bristol Beacon is a music charity, venue and music education hub. This grant supports Bristol Beacon to deliver a targeted programme of activity, Living Transformation, concentrating on Southmead, Knowle West and Easton, areas of high deprivation in Bristol. The programme will deliver a wide range of co-created music programmes alongside trusted partners in each of these communities.

Bradford Culture Company has been established to deliver the Bradford City of Culture programme in 2025. This will include large and small scale projects that will be delivered across the communities of the Bradford District, creating opportunity and enabling change. This grant will support their community engagement programme working with existing arts and culture organisations to develop skills, broaden their reach, and deliver new large-scale works co-created with communities.

Youth Focus North East (YFNE) provides support to the youth sector across the North East, and works directly with young people. This grant provides funding for Empowering youth, a project led by disadvantaged young people. The project encourages organisations to take a collaborative approach to meeting the needs of young people, and allow young people to take positions of influence and become leaders of systemic change. 

Sing, Speak and Shine will bring music and performance to eight schools in higher need areas in the Rivers Multi Academy Trust, upskilling teachers to improve pupil oracy with non-traditional tools. Through body percussion, pupils will develop confidence with vocabulary, using movement, rhythm and patterns. Through rap, pupils will articulate their opinions and through spoken word performance they will learn to express themselves powerfully in front of others. This progressive programme will culminate in performances showcasing pupil learning and an e‑toolkit for teachers, built on teacher journals and reflection sessions. The tools will be embedded into the RMAT’s oracy framework.

The Classroom as Artist Studio sees Arts Connect bring together three West Midland art galleries, Ikon Gallery, New Art Gallery Walsall and Wolverhampton Art Gallery to work with teachers across nine primary schools from across Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Dudley on a two-year project to bring Contemporary Art in the Classroom to support oracy for pupils. Inspired by artists and collectives teachers will explore social issues, introduce new practices and take risks to be bold, developing pedagogies to support pupils by creating oracy-rich classrooms.

Polka Children’s Theatre celebrates stories and believes children deserve the chance to create and tell their own stories. Polka’s methodology gamifies storytelling and drama techniques to develop the skills encompassed by Oracy Cambridge and Voice 21’s Oracy Framework. This project aims to support Key Stage 1 teachers to strengthen pupils’ conversation, particularly those disproportionately affected by the pandemic. The programme will focus on developing practice for teachers in six primary schools who will use drama to support oracy and provide the scaffolding needed for literacy skills.

This grant supports a partnership project between the Broadway Gallery (part of Letchworth’s Heritage Foundation) and eight primary schools. The project aims to use visual art/​design as a means of supporting PSHE outcomes (particularly wellbeing) with a particular focus on SEND pupils.