... and yet another round of grant writing done... who would have thought that running an music ensemble would involve so much faffing around with this sort of thing. Some arts organisations live or die by these grants, and it has been one very very clear founding principle that we will NEVER be reliant on grants to do our core music performances.

However, we will apply and use them to do accelerated sorts of things. Things that are just beyond the scope of our every day running. And that is what this last grant proposal aims to do...

... we have been approached by a composer who wanted to write something for us and one of our guests. However, we never budgeted for the commission fees and the extra rehearsal time. But we have always wanted to do this sometime down the track... to commission new works to feature alongside our old music. So, we have applied for a grant with this component being contingent upon funding. If we don't get some funding for it, then we can't afford the commissioning fee and rehearsals... and so we will fallback to our original plan of just the regular Early Music concert with no extra frills.

So, I always find it hard to write grants... they are always looking for something different to what artists and musicians find important... and they are often written with too few words, and then read with a slight inattention which seems quite apparent when we get the feedback.

Still, we have been successful once.. which is once more than pretty much every organisations of our age and size! And that gave us a huge boost, considering that we don't have the massive publicity and administrative overhead that most ensembles tend to have. We do everything in-house, with my wife and I being the founders and core musicians... and so, we are more than happy to do the logistical and administration as well. And that means that we have pretty much minimal costs... and that means that ticket sales and some private donations have put us in incredible financial shape...

... but we are always wary for the future and are very careful not to blow our early good fortune.

So, will we get this grant... I'm sort of less hopeful for this one. To me, it isn't a really strong proposal... but that said, our priorities and perception seem to be VERY different to what an arts funding body is looking for... so, it is quite possible that this is a strong proposal when looked at with different eyes!

Who knows... and you have to at least put in a proposal in order to be considered.

Anyway, if this fails... there is an intermediate fallback position that brings us to a smaller grant category. And if that fails, we have the original plan...

And that is the key to our operation, nothing is live or die... but extended, or stick to the financially viable plan. We are already moving much faster than we would have expected, given our less than two years in existence... and much faster than anyone one else would have expected. So, we are more than happy with that... but if a funding body decides to grant us with some Mario Kart mushrooms... we will take that boost and run with it!

... but NEVER NEVER NEVER will it ever be life or death. I have seen to many groups start to feel entitled to continued support... and when that goes, no amount of screaming and yelling fixes it... and then they find that they have overreached in a big big way and collapse. We never want to be in that position.... slow, steady, and sustainable growth... nothing flashy, but just given the tempo that my wife and I set, we are still comparatively sprinting!

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