Ten top tips for ACE funding

Fundraising skills are in demand at charities and arts organizations.

Introduction

In June 2015, Milton Keynes Council and Arts Council England got together to host a free event which aimed to provide “advice on developing successful funding applications“.

Top Ten Tips for Arts Council Funding (2015)

1. Council Resources – Local Council arts development officers may have experience of arts properties, arts strategy, development and monitoring grants, making them an important source of local help. 
2. Creating Your Project – Aim to explain your project on one side of A4, in a jargon-free way. Identifying opportunities to collaborate with other groups and projects in England gets you extra brownie points.
3. Do Your Research – Get information on what’s happening in your field of interest locally and nationally.
4. Needs Assessment - Look for an identified need for your arts project in your local area. This information may come from a local funding organisation’s report, the council’s arts & heritage strategy or from looking through ACE papers and research (e.g. the latest Arts Council Plan in the Advice & Guidance section of their website).
5. Funding – Build in other sources of funding, such as ticket sales and donations. An ACE grant alone will not cover all your costs and you’ll be expected to show 10% match funding (which may be ‘in kind’ offers of space, for example). Other grant funders may require individual artists to work with an organisation, so look for partners to put in partnership bids.
6. Partners – Aim to do work that is mutually beneficial, e.g. running workshops for the host organisation and sharing expertise.
7. Timescale – Project managing your time is very important. Allow 3 to 6 months to bring in the funding. Your event timescale should include all elements of your project, such as workshops and time to report back to your funder, rather than just the final outcome.
8. Artistic Quality – ACE are looking for quality in your arts projects, which is determined by:  a) relevant artistic work, experience and achievement; b) who is involved and the quality of mentors and arts supports. Your executive summary should be about 100 words and is best written like the conclusion to an essay. 
9. Public Engagement – It’s important to explain the Who and the How of audience engagement. You also need to think about how you will measure the success of your events and define your target audience. These are all metrics that will also come in handy for marketing and reporting on your event. 
10. Your Research and Development events can provide data for future funded events, so keep records of attendance and results throughout. Again, this can be fed into your marketing strategy.

Notes

Check for updates to funding criteria on ‘Grants For the Arts’ on the Arts Council England website.

http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/ 

A longer version of this article with more resource links can be found at Arts Development Funding 2015

Does anything need updating in this article? Let me know below or via my social media.

Arts Development Funding (2015)

Arts Development Slide

In my previous post, I was considering the skills that an artist needed to learn to operate in a way that was akin to a small business. I have mulled over this point and come to the conclusion that if we were to ask ‘Does an artist need to operate like a small business?’, the answer could be ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘Maybe’.

In short, it all depends on how an emerging Fine Art artist wishes to make their living. Here are the options I've noted so far:

1. If you’d asked your tutors you may have been told, as I was, to get a full-time job and make your art in the evenings and weekends. As a degree student I was disappointed by that suggestion. It seemed to reduce our graduate efforts to the same level as a self-taught artist (and some of those are excellent), effectively making the degree merely three years of negotiating how to obtain a piece of paper with the university’s crest on it. However, some thinking suggests that getting a really dull job will leave your mind to be fully creative in your time off, without the worry of how you’ll pay the bills. 
2. If you've observed graduates working in arts admin and gallery jobs, you’d have seen the concept of portfolio working in action,  a strategy which requires you to fit your art projects around various part-time arts jobs. Working for arts bodies suggests that you’d be making valuable contacts all the while but you may risk get pigeon-holed as a technician or education officer, rather than as a practicing artist.
3. It seems to me that this leaves one other option, supposing you haven’t got a trust fund, an agent/manager, patron or a relative with deep pockets. That option is to make your own opportunities including looking for your own funding.  That may be a necessity anyway even if, as the Guerrilla Girls [1] might have put it, you have escaped the art world with your four free-lance jobs, since your income may still not stretch to a studio of your own and related expenses. So, the way I see it, once you start getting into the habit of organising your own events, promoting, selling and funding your own work, you effectively need the same skills as any other small business person.

Arts and Culture Development Day (June 2015)

In early June, Milton Keynes Council arranged for an ‘Arts and Culture Development Day’ with Arts Council England [2]. There had been a similar event last year but this time the format was different, apparently because Milton Keynes arts grant funding applications had been less successful than usual, which was a concern for ACE and the MK Council arts team.

This was a free event “For artists, arts organisations and those who use the arts in their work. Come and join us for talks, advice and discussion on the development of arts and culture in Milton Keynes. The event will include advice on developing successful funding applications as well as a chance to hear more (and have your say!) on arts and culture opportunities in Milton Keynes. “

As usual I made lengthy notes but I’ll stick to the key points in this post. Lucy Bedford* has also allowed me to share the event slides, which I have put in the cloud here. [3]

Key points from my notes:

• Council resources - Lucy Bedford*, in MK council's arts and heritage team, now has 10 years of experience of arts properties, arts strategy, development and monitoring grants, so she’s an important source of local help. Likewise, if you’re outside MK then it’ll be worth checking what arts officers may be able to offer at your local council.
• Creating Your Project – Aim to explain your project on one side of A4, in a jargon-free way. Identifying opportunities to collaborate with other groups and projects in England gets you extra brownie points.
• Do Your Research – Get information on what’s happening in your field of interest locally and nationally.
• Needs Assessment - Look for an identified need for your arts project in your local area. This information may come from a local funding organisation’s report, the council’s arts & heritage strategy or from looking through ACE papers and research (e.g. the latest Arts Council Plan in the Advice & Guidance section of their website).
• Funding – Build in other sources of funding, such as ticket sales and donations, as an ACE grant alone will not cover all your costs and you’ll be expected to show 10% match funding (which may be ‘in kind’ offers of space for example). Other grant funders may require individual artists to work with an organisation, so look for partners to put in partnership bids.
• Partners – Aim to do work that is mutually beneficial, e.g. running workshops for the host organisation and sharing expertise.
• Timescale – Project managing your time is very important. Allow 3 to 6 months to bring in the funding. Your event timescale should include workshops and other events in your project, such as reporting back to your funder, rather than just the final outcome.
• Artistic Quality – ACE are looking for this quality in your arts projects. ACE need to know a) about relevant artistic work, experience and achievement; b) who’s involved and the quality of mentors and arts supports. Your executive summary should be about 100 words and is best written like the conclusion to an essay.
• Public Engagement – Who will engage with your activity, how will they engage, how will you measure it and who is your target audience? Note that any research and development events you run can provide data for future funded events, so keep records of results throughout.

Footnotes

[1] The Guerrilla Girls – conscience of the art world
http://www.guerrillagirls.com/posters/advantages.shtml
http://www.guerrillagirls.com/info/owa/owa.shtml
[2] Arts Council England – Funding
http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/
http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/browse-advice-and-guidance/great-art-and-culture-everyone
[3] MK Council slides from the Arts and Culture Development Day

On Being An Emerging Artist

Untitled (Triptych), 2012.

What New Artists Need But Their Art College Rarely Explains

Whatever kind of 'emerging'* artist you are at the moment, you probably went through some long moments wondering how on earth you were going to make a living and still practise your art. If you were lucky enough to jump straight from graduation into the spotlight of a showcase that supports your development, then well done. There are a few showcases that talent-spot and help show your work to galleries interested in new contemporary artists, you may even be spotted by a speculating collector or gallery owner keen to snap up a bargain an early exhibition of your work.

For most new artists, having studied studied Fine Art or painting and drawing at an art college, life after academia encompasses a period where they came out of it realising that, even though their contemporary art sensibilities had been polished to a shine, they were nevertheless ill-equipped for forging a career in the arts. They may not have realised there were showcases graduating students could apply for and they may have subsequently found out too late to meet those deadlines. The new artist may even be told after graduating that their last three (or four) years of degree work have little value and that post-grad work was where it started. Or they may hear from more experienced folk that an artist needs to get an MA to be taken seriously.

If that's what you experienced, this situation probably came as a bit of a shock for those of you that hadn't noted the lessons of art history or missed the confusingly vague slideshow on arts jobs offered by your university careers' advice service. If you made an appointment with a careers service advisor you probably were given the suggestion to get a job in graphic design or the like, or your tutors said you could create your work in the evenings and weekends like they did. They are probably studying for their PhD and you may wonder what that has to do with your art practice, given that it may be a requirement of their teaching position.

If you took your career seriously then you may have already invested in studio space, or started exhibiting your work at local venues. Some of you may have created your own websites, social media, business cards ready for enquiries but, unless you had a rush of visitors from some timely press coverage, you're probably still waiting for enough custom to pay your studio rent.

You should probably learn to pace yourself, as your glory days may take a while in arriving. If you're feeling frustrated by the slow rate of perceivable progress then take heart from Jeremy Deller's assessment of his own progress towards becoming a contemporary art star:

.. becoming an artist took some time. “I had no idea what I was doing basically,” he says about his twenties, when he took an MA in art history at Sussex University
  - Lunch with the FT: Jeremy Deller

What Are Your Options?

So what are the realities for most artists? Art history shows that a lot of well-known artists  have had to start by grafting in jobs that weren't art-related in order to pay the bills. Maybe they went back to live with their parents for a while - Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller hosted his first exhibition at his parents' house. Perhaps they ran workshops or got their post-grad teaching diploma and went back into academia.

Taking a look at the emerging artists I know locally, many have arts-based roles work as technicians or become support staff at galleries and other local arts organizations. They may practise 'portfolio working' (a useful phrase I spotted in my university's careers slideshow), which basically means having several part-time jobs in freelance or permanent roles. You'll find that flexible part-time jobs are in demand amongst artists who want an income whilst still having a bit of time to work on their practice.

Beware the comfort of becoming someone's employee, especially in a full-time role. That's not to say you shouldn't do take a secure job, rather a warning that it can become a trap of sorts once you become dependent on the benefits of your role. One artist warned me off taking up a (temporary) council arts officer role I was applying for, saying that it would distract me from my art work. I put my tender application in anyway, hopeful of a living wage and a way of networking but, even though I felt fairly well-qualified with my prior work experience, it seems that I didn't meet their criteria.

There are lots of unpaid roles about, some disguised as volunteer roles (you're only truly a volunteer if you don't have to work fixed regular hours or aren't a substitute for a paid employee), some roles are boldly advertised as unpaid internships, some work is on offer for artists that (once you've paid the admin fees and for your own travel, etc.) may cost you more than the token fee offered. Prepare yourself by reading Alistair Gentry's 'Career Suicide' blog for advice on how to avoid getting ripped off by fake opportunities, check out the AIR - Paying Artists campaign and the handy a-n Signposts publication.

The Business of Being an Artist

Still you may wonder where your career as an artist fits into these options and rightly so. At some point you have to concede that you, as an artist, are self-employed. Regardless of which shows you do, who supports you, which groups you join, and what else you study, you are the only one driving your practise forward now.

You are a small business and you now need to learn some small business skills.

There are plenty of resources on offer, once you accept the situation. Groups like a-n  and ArtQuest can advise you on best practise, business tips and cheap insurance, HMRC offers free small business courses and so on. You'll need to register yourself as self-employed once you're ready (I felt that I'd wait until I had my first freelance paid role).

I'll admit that I've been slow to take these up as I was initially fighting against being self-employed but knowing the help is out there is reassuring. Bear in mind though that, as a small business, your job as an artist will probably mean up to 70% of your time could be taken up with the machinery of running a business and so only part of your time  will be left for developing your practice.

In Conclusion

The general drift of what I've seen so far is that you do need to have a 'day job' to pay the bills. Ideally you'll also avoid jobs that offer you lots of 'experience' but so little money, unless you really are learning something useful. However it seems that you must be prepared to be self-employed, or at least flexibly employed, embrace a certain amount of risk and possibly give up the day job at some point in order to have the art career you hoped for.


Notes

* Of course there is the whole question of what is an 'emerging' artist anyway and when can it be determined that we have stopped emerging, but that topic probably warrants its own article.



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Some Famous Artists and The Jobs They Started In

On that note, here's a reminder that you're not on your own in your winding path for recognition:

• Andy Warhol was a very successful illustrator before he moved into fine art. 1
• Francis Bacon supplemented his early income with interior design.
• Jeremy Deller, who used one of his jobs to design slogan-covered t-shirts as conceptual art, "worked at jobs including postman, driver and shop assistant at Sign of the Times, a Covent Garden clothing shop for which he designed T-shirts featuring lyrics by Philip Larkin" 2
• Jeff Koons worked in sales and finally as a commodities trader in Wall Street before he hit his stride selling flashy art to wealthy patrons.
• Richard Serra's first job was working in the steel mills, to support his studies at Yale. 3
• At different points in his life, Duchamp was the following: professional chess player, self-publisher, painter, volunteer for military service, art dealer, gambler, inventor, librarian, secretary to a French war mission in the second world war. He also dabbled in cleaning and fabric-dying businesses, thought of becoming a professional cameraman and was eager to market self-designed chess sets, optical machines and scientific toys. 4

Many of these artists incorporated the skills they gained in their early jobs into their arts practice, which only seems to have aided them in developing their ideas.

Notes

1. Warhol:early work http://www.warhol.org/collection/art/earlywork/
2  Lunch with the FT: Jeremy Deller www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1e3fbcca-f9c4-11e2-b8ef-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3Gmus5iM1
3. Man of Steel http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2008/oct/05/serra.art
4 Marcel Duhamp: A riotous A-Z of his secret life http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/apr/07/marcel-duchamp-artist-a-z-dictionary