Grants database

This grant will support Dance Base, Scotland’s National Centre for Dance, to deliver a nation-wide Dance for Parkinson’s programme. The organisation will create a network of hubs in partnership with Scottish Ballet.

The Welcoming supports people who have migrated to the UK or are seeking refuge, to achieve their potential. The grant will enable the exploration and testing of new approaches to embed arts within the organisation’s core programme. The Welcoming will work in partnership with arts and cultural organisations to find new opportunities for people to contribute to the social, cultural and economic life of Scotland.

Dance Umbrella is a London-based international festival with a mission to engage new audiences through contemporary dance. Dance Umbrella will partner with London Borough of Croydon, local young people and organisations to test how to overcome barriers to dance. A new model of grassroots dance will be developed and delivered within its touring framework, founded on learning with participants.

Arcola Theatre is renowned for presenting diverse and accessible work. Through this grant, it will develop a robust evidence base for the impact of its community theatre group and create a framework to support current groups to establish independent practice.

Project Sparks aims to develop a new and innovative learning model in the creative arts where learning-disabled people teach percussion, singing and dance to young children and higher-need learners. This approach alters the traditional relationship between educator and student, by transforming disabled learners from passive recipients to active role-models. This grant will allow the organisation to explore how the model will operate and generate key learning to form an evidence base.

Jason and Samara Jones-Hall are foster carers who want to create a digital solution for children-in-care to safely develop, store and access their life stories. They believe this can help solve practical issues, as well as enhancing children-in-care’s sense of identity by allowing them to develop their own life story as an ongoing process. This grant will support consultation and research into policy, legal and technical frameworks.

Hannah Ross will pilot a new approach to arts-based workshops that accommodates the access needs of participants and arts practitioners living with chronic illness. The focus of the workshops will vary, with an emphasis on film throughout. The project will explore how to create a support network for chronically ill people, whilst raising awareness for invisible disabilities.

Dr Amy Pollard will develop a resource to help young people use humour to protect themselves against threats to their mental health. She will develop ideas through workshops that enable young people to design tools that meet their needs. The project aims to help users recognise a wider range of options in how they can respond to difficult situations, and support them to choose between these options with more confidence.

Dr Carl Towler is a teacher and academic researcher, concerned with exploring the connection between a young person’s socio-economic background and how they negotiate complexity in a text. Hack the Book is an interactive digital story designed to explore dispositions and attitudes to complexity. Working collaboratively, the objective is for young people to actively engage with ambiguity in fictional settings to support them to develop the skills and understanding needed to manage ambiguity in real-life settings, like the work place.

Careviz is a tech for good company that aims to improve the lives of cancer patients. This grant will support the organisation to develop a free app to help patients to connect with family and friends, monitor symptoms and access wellbeing products.

Alice Sachrajda and Alex Glennie believe that public places could do more to inspire creativity and support people to live well together. They plan to share stories about people living and working in local communities, starting with a pilot in Oval tube station. Working closely with photographers and illustrators, they will collect and exhibit people’s stories about their identities.

This grant will provide additional funding to support Magdalena Schamberger, 2014 Breakthrough Fund grantee, as she steps down from Hearts & Minds to begin a new phase as an independent arts practitioner and social change agent. Magdalena seeks to change perceptions about the creative potential of people living with dementia and to work with them as co-creators. This grant will allow her to develop and deliver performances and training sessions for arts practitioners piloted through the Breakthrough Fund, to develop new projects and build funding relationships.