One of the things about advising on grant making is that you don’t often have a chance to see how the funding decisions translate from paper application into real life practice.
It was therefore a particular pleasure to attend the Creative Schools Symposium which was awarded funding from the A New Direction Challenge Board.
Creative Schools brings together schools and cultural organisations from across East London to improve access to high quality arts and cultural education for all local children and young people.
Entitlement to broad curriculum and enrichment activities is a key theme for Every Child Should and one of our key principles is that collaboration between schools and third sector providers is a route to both effective use of scarce resources and better outcomes for all.
At the symposium we explored the very early principles of developing a case for support for new programme or piece of work. Too many charities (and I have been guilty of this myself) come up with school based projects with little or no reference to schools and then crowbar the school in to the funding bid at the last minute. The work that I have led that has stuck in schools, and had had most impact on children and young people, has been co-designed and delivered with schools with funding more evenly distributed between school and charity. This though takes work and the case for support template provides a potential frame for discussing funding ideas together ahead of the funding application process.
I promised a few key links for participants that might help in future funding applications. And a copy of the pub quiz.
I was struck by – how even in the challenging financial and curriculum context – participants from both schools and charities had so much energy and enthusiasm for collaboration and for change. I look forward to next steps.
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