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YAY, YAY, YAY!

Our ensemble has always has a grant application or two in for various funding and philanthropic bodies throughout the year. Mostly, we treat them as accelerators for what we are doing... things that we want to do down the track, but a grant allows us to bump them up the timeline. And thankfully, being a light and agile group, we don't rely on grants for existential funding. That seems to be a trap that many arts organisations get themselves into... especially if they win large grants and use that to expand their non-core (non music) expenses... such as hiring administrative/PR/marketing staff or renting out offices. Often the rationale there is that the more "professional" the group is with offices and administrative staff, then the more successful they will be in following grant rounds...

... and that is the sort of thinking that most "business" people who sit on their boards have. The concept that appearing successful will create more success... sadly, when the grants don't get awarded, then these groups are burdened with commitements and expenses way way beyond what they can service through donations, services, and ticket sales.

As a small group, I have seen these larger groups fall into this trap, and often they start screaming about how important their art is... and that generally falls on deaf ears (pardon the pun...). So, we have avoided applying for grants that would serve to fund any non-core activities. We play music and present concerts... the end. We will grow by word of mouth and stay within our operating budgets with a conservative approach to expenses.

... but one aspect that we have been trying to push in our short two years of existence has been an apprenticeship model of training tertiary (and sometimes secondary) students. We don't audition, but we pick and choose the players that we think have potential and we offer them a place in a particular concert... playing and learning alongside us and our guests, and then we pay a small stipend to help cover costs, give them extra individual training, and a lesson with one of our visiting guest artists.

And we have done this on a concert by concert basis, as we have to make sure that we have enough of a financial buffer to make this happen without sinking ourselves. Despite our passion and belief that this is the way to entice and train fledgling musicians to our way of thinking about music... we still need to be financially viable to make this happen for years to come.

So, we have been able to invite and train quite a few students... but it has always been a bit hairy as to whether or not it would be possible.

... which leads us to applying for grants to see if we can put this aspect of our ensemble on a longer term footing... at least to have financial certainty for a year of our series instead of re-evaluating each project. And because we run light, the actual cost of inviting a student into the programme is not crazily expensive.... and also, we aren't using the "education excuse" to pad out our main offering... ahem, that seems to be a tactic that some groups can use to help cover their regular operating expenses.

We recently put in an application to a philanthropic group to see if they would be interested in funding some students. As per always, we put in the best application that we could, but didn't count on it... and as it turns out, we got news that we picked up TWO separate grants for our education program!

To be honest, I was stunned... I was going to consider ourselves very lucky if we picked up ONE grant... but two!?!?!? This will be about double the number of student spots that we had originally planned for 2025, but we can definitely fit in the extra players... we just need to think carefully about who we invite and then think about how we work them into our planning.

But that is a problem for next month... first we have our own final 2024 series concert to wrap up, along with all the other craziness that is our October/November schedule. Then my wife and I can sit down and settle WHO we want to ask.... I have a rough shortlist, and I'm sure that she will also have a couple that she would have in mind.

YAYAYAYAYA!!!!!!

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