Grants database

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.

Eden Court Highlands is working with ten small, rural primary schools in the Highland region of Scotland. Specialist artist practitioners are working collaboratively with teachers to develop arts-based approaches in their teaching, including role-play, characterisation, storytelling, film and image composition, to support the teaching of the Health & Wellbeing and Social Studies curriculum areas.

Dance Collective plans to develop a programme of professional development for teachers at nine schools in Llandudno, North Wales. Through collaboration with dance artists, teachers will develop their confidence, skills and knowledge in teaching dance and creative movement. The project also aims to support schools to develop strategies for embedding dance and creative movement throughout the Curriculum for Wales.

Who Are We? is an oracy project involving six schools from East London / Essex and poet educators/​spoken word artists from Eastside Education Trust. Content will be based around celebrating pupils’ diversity and identity and provide cross-curricular learning tools through a variety of subject areas.

Liverpool Philharmonic enhances and transforms lives through music. At the heart of their work is the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (the UK’s oldest); an extensive programme of participative work with young people; and presentation of almost 400 concerts and events each year. This grant will create a £3.5 million endowment, the investment gains from which will be solely used to underpin Liverpool Philharmonic’s long-term commitment to inspiring children and young people to develop their passion for music and fulfil their potential.