One down, one to go…

One decision has been made!

I now have permission to work in the woods in Madresfield. This means I can now finish off my Arts Council application to try and get the project funded. I last got ACE funding in 2021/2 and things have changed since then. The Grantham portal looks different, much prettier. However it still crashed four times yesterday while I was trying to use it. It still is tricky to navigate, and I recommend frequent saving, and writing your text elsewhere before pasting in. Some of the boxes are so narrow it’s like typing through a letterbox with chopsticks, so make sure you type and edit elsewhere and keep an eye on the word count. Although even this is hit and miss as the portal word count is not the same as in Pages, with or without spaces, and I’m told it’s not the same as Word either, so good luck with that. All of this means it is not an easy process. You can’t even find the log in button without delving deep into the website. I suggest you bookmark it as soon as you find it!

All of this makes the experience difficult. You have to be pretty bloody minded to get this far to be honest. I can’t help thinking that alongside professing they want transparency and accessibility, they are simultaneously, deliberately, making it as inaccessible as possible. Do they think people might accidentally log in? Accidentally get money?

It does not make for a fair system in my opinion. 

But do not fear! I have a brilliant idea to make funding cheaper, easier, more accessible and fairer!

Have a one page form where you put in your basic details, alongside proof that you are working as an artist. This could be an online portfolio, a website, links to social media or a letter of recommendation… there might be other ways, it could be a long list. It would just take one or two people a few minutes to check the eligibility of the application, then it gets put in a virtual hat and each person picked out gets £20,000 for a year. Or whatever number/period is decided. Then if successful you can only apply again once that year is up.

No too-wordy repetitive justifications, no budget, no plan… maybe an evaluation, this could perhaps be optional, and could be done at any time after the end of the year. Sometimes results and effects don’t crop up till years after.

Savings on admin alone would mean so many more artists could take advantage of this. 

The gain is tremendous when you just let artists do their thing. The money is always spread about and threaded back into the local economy.

Never going to happen is it?