Grants database

Community Music Wales are Wales’s leading music charity with a mission to empower disadvantaged groups and individuals through participation in music-making. This grant will support Community Music Wales to deliver a four year professional development and training programme for community music practitioners with the aim to enhance both the quality of practice and the amount of activity being offered to participants across Wales.

Paines Plough are committed to developing UK playwrights and touring high quality new shows to reach as many people across the country as possible through small and medium-scale touring. This grant will support Plaines Ploughs’ work with 30 venues in a small-scale touring circuit with an increased focus on building young audiences and a more sustainable touring model. Paines Plough will disseminate learning to the sector and broker relationships between other touring companies and circuit venues.

Founded as a project of the Pallant House Gallery in 2006, Outside In supports the engagement of marginalised people across the UK who find it hard to access the mainstream visual arts world due to disability, health or social circumstance. It provides a vital platform for marginalised artists’ work via high profile exhibitions, and addresses wider barriers to inclusion via training, advocacy and partnerships. This grant supports the first two years of Outside In’s operation as an independent charitable body, to help it develop its long-term sustainability as it grows its reach, impact and profile.

Geese Theatre Company strives to develop and deliver theatre and drama practice of the highest quality to people and places with the least engagement in the arts. The company will deliver three years of activity developing each participants theatrical and personal skills, with the aim of raising self-esteem and confidence, increasing well-being and motivation to change. Every year, the ensemble will present their work at Birmingham Repertory Theatre and in community spaces reaching a wide audience of friends, peers and professionals.

The National Museum Wales will radically change how they deliver exhibitions to break down barriers experienced by those facing disadvantage. The Museum also seeks to reform governance models and recruitment practices to better represent the demography of Wales. To widen access and participation, the Museum will develop two national strategic plans with partners; one to address health and wellbeing and the other to focus on personal development and employability. Through convening the Museum aims to lead the sector, to influence policy on a national level and to demonstrate the positive impact of cultural participation.

Arnolfini exists to bring together communities, creating a space where ideas can be exchanged. Through this grant, Arnolfini will provide two Artist Fellowships for community-based emerging artists to deliver a yearlong artist led action research and co-creation programme. Participants will develop skills in a variety of art forms alongside exploring ideas of agency, rights and voice. It will culminate in a showcase event (Festival of New Ideas) bringing together communities and key decision makers.

Since opening in 1901 the Horniman Museum & Gardens has provided an inspiring introduction to life on earth via their collections, exhibitions, activities and events. This project will co-develop a new participatory programme with community partners and artists as the museum works towards redisplaying its Anthropology collection and the opening of a new gallery. It will trial co-production working groups for 10 months with community and museum group members, which will be peer reviewed by wider community groups and visitor responses. An external evaluator will develop an evaluation framework based on the key points of enquiry.

Camden People’s Theatre (CPT) is dedicated to supporting early-career artists making unconventional theatre, exploring issues that matter to people right now. Through this grant, CPT will test whether an artist-led approach to audience diversity can appeal to audiences from BAME backgrounds. They aim to gain a better understanding of the barriers preventing emerging artists from BAME backgrounds from entering the field of contemporary theatre making. They intend to use this learning to inform their wider organisational policy and practice.

Actors Jimmy Akingbola and Fraser Ayres founded TriForce Promotions to create a supportive network that enabled creatives such as actors, writers and film-makers to connect and make things happen, no matter their background or ease of access to decision makers and talent spotters. The Breakthrough Fund supported the salaries of the two founders and their Company Director Minnie Crowe and to grow its work in order to establish a self-sustaining future.

John Rostron co-founded the Cardiff-based music festival Sŵn with Radio 1 DJ Huw Stephens in 2007, to promote and celebrate new music coming in and out of Wales. It has grown into a four-day event, with 200 artists in all kinds of venues plus DJs, exhibitions, film screenings, music industry sessions, outdoor performances and more. The Breakthrough Fund supported John to focus on Sŵn full time and to pay himself a salary. It enabled him to build an expanded vision and plans for Sŵn that saw the organisation make a wider contribution to the growth and vibrancy of the Welsh new music scene and to achieve a viable longer term future.

David is the Director of Bury Metropolitan Arts Association (The Met), where he has built up a very successful folk and roots music programme including the Ramsbottom and Homegrown Festivals, which has allowed him to build audiences for other areas of the Met’s programme. The Breakthrough Fund supported David to set up his own company, So It Is. This company produces its own events and festivals. It also works with the Met and new networks of venues in the North West, many of whom have limited arts programming, to build strong, distinctive programmes and to attract sustained, enthusiastic audiences.

Liz O’Neill is CEO of Z‑arts, a venue for children and families in Manchester, previously known as the Zion Arts Centre. Over the past four years, she has refocused, renewed and greatly strengthened the organisation, rebranding it as Z‑arts, and establishing its new focus on creative arts activity and programmes for children, teenagers and families. The Breakthrough Fund enabled Liz to pursue her vision for family theatre, working with artists and other co-producers to develop, commission and produce new work that reflects the diverse nature of family experience today.