Grants database

The Foundation Years Trust was formed to implement the findings of the 2010 Frank Field Independent report on how to prevent poor children becoming poor adults. This grant will support the Foundation’s holistic approach to strengthening parenting skills in the most vulnerable families in Birkenhead. It will carry out a large-scale academic evaluation of its impact, with a view to influencing national policy and practice. In particular, this grant will underpin Read It Together: a programme offering parent and child reading groups with space for unique adult-only reading time. This programme aims to support the home learning environment, encourage book-friendly homes and support parental mental health.

Create London is an independent charity, with a strong track record of bringing art to communities in East London. This grant will provide core support towards a season of music, film, art and debate investigating and discussing the state, and the inequalities, of the cultural sector in the UK. This programme reflects on the findings of a new national survey, commissioned by Create and delivered by Goldsmiths University, which looked into the social background of those working in the arts: from how their higher education was funded, to where they could afford to live.

This grant will provide support towards a consortium of organisations that have come together to carry out the learning from the Learning Away initiative to promote ​“Brilliant Residentials.” This programme comprised of school trips with an overnight stay, which were led by teachers, co-designed with students and fully integrated into the curriculum.

The Battersea Arts Centre is a community and event venue based in the historic old town hall in Lavender Hill, London. Every year, its dedicated team provide workshop activities for 5000 young people, work with over 400 artists and put on more than 650 performances. This grant will support Battersea Arts Centre in the aftermath of a fire in 2015 that destroyed their Grand Hall. It will allow the centre to continue activities which achieve their mission ​‘to inspire people to take creative risks to shape the future.’

This grant will support a series of performances named after Claus Moser. Lord Moser was a life-long friend of Paul Hamlyn and was closely involved with the Foundation, first as an adviser and then as a trustee.

This grant will provide support to underpin the collaboration between Almeida Projects and Arsenal in the Community’s Positive Future around the main stage production of ​“Boy”, by Leo Butler: a play that focuses on social exclusion. Performance pieces will be written by young people across four different settings, with a film-maker documenting the process and Arsenal players reading the finished works alongside actors.

MyBnk designs and delivers financial and enterprise workshops to young people aged 11–25 in schools and youth organisations. This grant will fund the Quality and Training Director, who leads on operations, monitoring and evaluation. MyBnk is expanding into the South West and plans to expand further to the Midlands and North over the next couple of years. It will also expand its work focusing on the most vulnerable young people and to evidence its impact and the social return on investment it achieves, so that it can attract funding from new sources.

Since 1992, the Foyer Federation has provided safe accommodation, employment and training opportunities for young people who cannot live at home. The Foyer Federation plans to develop, test and roll out a refreshed model for UK-wide foyers. This will embed the ​‘advantaged thinking’ strengths-based approach to working with young people across its 100-strong member network. The work includes creating and piloting a foyer ​‘developers’ guide’, a new accreditation framework, a business model and review of the international literature around advantaged thinking. This grant will provide core support for its work.

Clan Childlaw is a law centre for children and young people in Scotland providing free legal representation outreach services, training and policy work. Clan Childlaw will develop its services to extend access to legal representation for children and young people in Scotland into new policy areas. It aims to advance policy and the implementation of children’s rights, particularly children involved with the care and criminal justice systems.

Fuse Art Space is a community and events venue in Bradford’s deprived northern quarter, dedicated to community cohesion and urban regeneration. This grant will support a series of film screenings tailored to specific asylum seeking groups to explore whether this provides a low pressure entry point to engage in the native cultural life of Bradford. Whilst there are avenues for newly arrived asylum seekers to actively participate in local activities, this would provide an opportunity for people with lower confidence levels to integrate themselves into the city’s social and cultural spaces at their own pace and on their own terms.

This grant will develop the Project for the Registration of Children as British Children (PRCBC), which is being hosted by Asylum Aid. PRCBC will explore whether policy changes relating to the registration of undocumented young people as British citizens can be secured using test cases in strategic litigation proceedings. A focus on strategic litigation has the potential to set precedents for other undocumented young people to register as citizens by remedying unlawful and poor practice. In addition, Asylum Aid will test whether hosting projects in early stages can allow them to grow steadily before being established as independent entities.

Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), established in 1967, provides legal support for immigrants and their families. They specialise in immigration and asylum law and policy. JCWI will test a new internal structure and model of delivery to maximise their resources and increase their impact. This includes a more joined-up approach to casework, campaigns and training, with a view to driving forward focused policy change. It will identify potential test cases to bring forward as strategic litigation cases. It will also run related campaigns alongside these cases to raise awareness of key issues; engaging MPs and tabling parliamentary questions and policy amendments. Finally, it will engage and train relevant professions responsible for policy implementation.