Sigh... once more into the breach! Although our ensemble is set up and doing well without needing additional funding from arts bodies, it still doesn't hurt to apply for grants to give a little bit of an extra boost. Thankfully, we have set everything up so that we aren't dependent on funding... as there are many arts organisations that are too heavily reliant on funding for survival instead of as an extra... and going forward, we will always keep that ethos in mind, as it can be quite stressful to do otherwise, and arts funding bodies can't always manage to support everything that applies for assistance.

This coming year, we have one project that we think is worthwhile for arts grant support... we are an Early Music ensemble, but a composer reached out to us and was interested in writing a composition for us and for a guest artist that we have for 2025.

Now, as you can imagine... we don't have much experience with commissioning works. All our stuff has been written about 300-400 years ago... and there is no returning back to the Baroque and Classical eras! That said, we do dredge up stuff from the libraries!

Anyway, after the initial shock of the request... we started to talk about how it all works, and for that... we had to talk to various other composers, as well as the specific composer about how the process of commissioning a piece works... from conception through to post-performance ownership and rights! Quite a learning journey...

... and seeing as it wasn't budgeted for in our original plan for 2025, we will have to make a case for funding to carry this extra idea through. We will have two levels of funding requests in place... and then we will also have a disaster case of zero funding... as we sort of are keen to see how this would play out!

But all of that means that I'm back to the grant writing treadmill again... collecting letters of support, and budgeting, and email writing and all of that sort of stuff. Most of it is getting over the pain of ASKING if someone will write a recommendation/letter for us... everyone has (so far...) been really happy to write something for us, even from the most unexpected quarters! So... with that in mind, I need to swallow my fear and just write the email requests before it gets too close to the deadline!

This will be an adventure! Hopefully one that isn't too heavy from the financial point of view... but we have been hyper clear with what we can and can't cover in the various scenarios!

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