Sigh... it is a bit of a chore to do, but definitely worthwhile if are successful. Grant Writing for arts organisations... and for our little ensemble, we were successful with our first ever application last year (apparently, that is an unexpected feat!). That has meant that we have been able to run our concerts this year without financial worry... but as it turns out, we seem to have managed to pull decent enough audiences to manage to scrape through just on ticket sales alone (again, unusual for a new ensemble...)! So, the grant money means that we are able to build a buffer for 2024, and fund and expand our education ideas as well! So, we've been putting that extra buffer to good use, both to build the ensemble and to do things that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to do.

This next round, we are applying for a slightly larger grant to fund a slightly more ambitious concert diary (6 total concerts compared to 4 this year). Well, funnily enough, apparently the four concert series this year was more than comparable sized ensembles were doing elsewhere! I honestly have no idea what anyone else is doing... or what is considered "normal"! I just ran with an idea and developed it...

Anyway, there would be the similar core of 4 chamber concerts in 2024, with two other concerts of a slightly different format and purpose. We'll see if I can manage to explain it clearly enough in the application!

Anyway, the grant writing has involved gathering letters of support and interest from venues and others that would be involved with us... that has been mostly easy, but this week will be the gentle nagging and reminding for the holdouts that haven't done what they have promised.... and the week after, it will be less gentle!

Our long-term vision and plan for 2024 is clear... but the difficulty is writing it into the limited word count and weirdly worded questions of the grant proposals. It feels like navigating a cross between a high-school essay answer question and an incomprehensible government document... there are criteria to address and all of that word-salad stuff... most of which makes little sense to me, and many of the times, the words mean something completely different to what I would understand them to mean (you have to read the supporting documents, and then you realise that the "word" has been chosen to be a nice yet misleading headline sort of thing).

Anyway, I have at least made a start on it... and when I take a look back on our last successful application, it appears that I ended up writing about what I wanted to write about... stuff that was passionate and interesting to me, and I didn't try to tick boxes and fit criteria. Perhaps that is really the way to go with these things... I am not good at the box-ticking, and I don't want to one of those organisations that end up doing half-arsed things just qualify for funding.

I guess, in the end, the last time was successful because we DIDN'T NEED the funding to go ahead... it was just a nice bonus. This time is similar, we have alternative plans if we don't get the funding... but we don't really need it to survive at all! So, I think I will take that approach, and write like I don't need the funding... and just write about what exactly excites me about the project and our ensemble!

Still... much like the university essays that I had to write for the Masters of Education, I tend to overthink these things... think I've done a crappy essay... which turns out to be okay.

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