What's on Calendar

This full-day workshop is for artists, creative practitioners and creative businesses/organisations seeking funds to develop arts projects that will create opportunities for themselves and others.

The workshop will be delivered by Jane Shaw, founding director of Create North which is one of the UK’s longest established enterprise animation companies specifically focused on helping individuals and organisations to exploit their latent enterprise talents.

This workshop is being delivered in conjunction with Amble Development Trust who recently commissioned Create North to support the development of a major new walking trail of public sculptures inspired by the coastal bird-life found around Amble. Created by nationally and internationally renowned artists, these exciting new artworks will be bringing something unique and very special to the area. The trail artistically showcases the diversity of birdlife found in the local landscape through a range of sculptural, sound / music, text/ poetry and digital technology platform experiences. It will be a ‘must see’, immersive experience that brings a heightened awareness to audiences of the relationship between the landscape and the world of ornithology, accompanied by a community engagement programme.

As a significant investment in public art in the area, the trail and accompanying activities represents a great, new opportunity for local artists to capitalise on this investment and the national profile that the trail will create. This workshop will be of particular interest to artists interested in the environment, bird life and partnering with the trust to prepare proposals that builds on the development of the trail.

In this workshop Jane will share insights from her 25 years’ experience of applying for funding for the arts, winning contracts, preparing proposals, and implementing and managing large-scale projects. You will be introduced to enterprise tools and techniques that will help you to:

• Find potential funders
• Generate innovative project ideas
• Evidence needs
• Set clear objectives and goals
• Develop proposals
• Gather insights into what funders are looking for
• Get collaboration and buy-in
• Identify possible outcomes, outputs and impacts
• Cost and price proposals
• Identify match funding
• Prepare applications

You’ll complete the session with a greater understanding of the dos and don’ts of applying for funds, of what triggers funders’ interest, and of how to develop winning projects that add value to your practice and have a positive impact on others.

Emphasis will be placed on sharing best practice and contextualising the learning within your own area of work. Jane’s approach is to encourage learning-by-doing in a vibrant and informal atmosphere.