£3 million of Arts Council England Funding for Clients

Over 900 organisations will be in receipt of funding from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to support their development from 2023-2026.

We are delighted to have been successful in applying for our second round of NPO funding, securing our charity over £350,000 of funding each year for the next three years – a nudge over £1 million worth of investment over the next funding period. And there is more good news from the consultancy team too.

Our consultancy team has worked with a wide range of organisations on their NPO and IPSO funding applications and we’re thrilled to be able to share that 75% of the clients we’ve supported with their applications have been successful. This totals a magnificent £1,004,000 worth of arts funding secured, and with this funding being allocated per year, the team has helped our clients to raise over £3 million of Arts Council England funding in total. These investments will allow those organisations to plan a creative and sustainable approach for their cultural development until 2026.

Anouar Kassim, founding Director of Milton Keynes Islamic Arts, Heritage and Culture told us about their plans: “This funding will increase our capacity to deliver quality arts programmes with local diverse communities but also allows us to explore new partnerships for our new Light Festival.”

After the funding decisions were announced by Arts Council England at the beginning of November, all of the successful applicants, including Art Reach, will enter the negotiation period which requires a detailed activity programme, financial projections and plans to deliver on Investment Principles by early next year. Our consultancy team is continuing to work with some of the successful applicants to support them through the negotiation period.

Mary Genis, Artistic Director of CultureMix Arts, explains how our consultancy support helped focus their application: “Jo from Art Reach took us through the process of understanding the criteria for the funding whilst acting as a critical friend with helpful feedback on drafts. Having the support of an external organisation enabled us to further explore the correlation between CultureMix Arts’ vision and Arts Council England’s Let’s Create 10 year strategy.”

Jo Dacombe, Head of Consultancy at Art Reach, looks forward to the next steps in the process: “Securing this level of long-term funding is fantastic for any organisation. It allows people to take credible steps towards growth and significant business development and I’m very excited to see what this enables organisations to achieve over the next three years.”

Another organisation that Jo supported through this process is Jelly, a charity which champions the creative arts in Reading, who were also successful in receiving funding for the next three years. Kate Powell, Associate Director, told us more about the application process: “Working with Jo gave us the focus and the drive to complete the process. Without her sessions and joint planning to further the application, we feel that we would have meandered into areas that were neither relevant nor worthwhile. This funding will allow us to begin an organisational restructure which will stabilise and balance our organisation, supporting and encouraging the operations team to achieve creative excellence. We don’t feel that we could have done it without Jo. She guided us, informed us, rationalised with us and empowered us.”

Our consultancy team can also help with your cultural or creative business development and fundraising, so contact us to see how we can support you.