Thread by @NathanielJHall

The new Arts Council Project Grants bid model is unsustainable and exclusionary.

Here's my b***h about it...

(inc. 10 things I've learnt from completing the new format).

🧵

We just submitted a bid. It was for a big project, but not huge, with a total budget circa £180k. We are asking ACE for just over half that.

It took a team of 3 around 4 weeks to gather all the information required. 2 of those weeks were intense near full-time work for 1 person.

We're a small company. We had enough cash reserve to pay 1 person for 5 days (recommended rate for this work is £250 p/day). The rest of the work was delivered for free. Arts Council do not allow you to claim the costs of writing your bid in the grant.

On submission I downloaded the application as a PDF. It was 201 pages long. In terms of the grant ask, this represents nearly £500 per page.

This work is highly skilled and complex. You need staff who can manage multiple partnerships, build complex cashflows, understand employment law, write succinct and compelling narrative, who have a deep understanding of cultural output in England... and much more.

You also need to have a deep understanding of ACE's Let's Create Strategy - a long, complex and wholly inaccessible document. At all stages you must demonstrate to ACE in explicit detail how you deliver this strategy on their behalf.

You must have all your project partners in place. On this bid that represents 63 different freelancers. You need to engagement figure, inc. digital reach. The decision turnaround on applications of this size is 12 weeks 3. Your project cannot begin until after this date.

You must have a comprehensive project plan, in-kind support from partners, confirmed cash from others, at least 10% match funding in place, demonstrate how the money will grow and develop your organisation, have contingency planning in place... it goes on and on...

To top it all off, you must apply through Grantium, the world's most un-user-friendly and unintuitive portal system that sends you through impossible loops of forms and formlets.

Other than working on this bid, I've earned £1000 this month. I haven't had time to earn any more. Luckily, I'm living rent free at the minute.

I'm not quite sure where this thread is going, but if you've got this far and are about to embark on an ACE Project Grant bid, here are my tips:

1. Give yourselves at least 4 weeks to complete it.
2. Build your budget first, everything else hangs off it, and you need to know your total ask before you can do the pre-application.
3. Spend serious time studying Let's Create

4. Don't underestimate the time it takes to pull your partners list or project timeline together (and upload them)
5. Dynamism section - no-one knows what its about, not even ACE. Think of it as a chance to demonstrate how your project advances your business model

6. Complete the Environmental Responsibility section - it will work favourably for you (and also, we should be striving to reduce waste and energy consumption)
7. Add 5% to all fees to off-set the cost of living crisis

8. Up your own fees - I bet you've chronically underestimated what project management you'll need to do.
9. Write your narrative near to last - so much of it depends on the nuts and bolts of the project.
10. Don't lose faith!

Time for a 🍺

Update: I had three