Most times I've been successful in acquiring Arts Council funds it has been through indirect means - somebody applying on my behalf, usually through a commissioning body (gallery, producer, festival, etc). The people who hold responsible positions in such organisations are expert grant writers and have a much better hit-rate than 2.5%. If that is the likely success rate then I'd tend to feel it is not worthwhile applying. You need a better likelihood than that. Even 10% is marginal. 20% is about when it starts to get worthwhile, in terms of the odds.
One of the main reasons I shifted from being a freelance artist to working in academia was due to issues around funding. During the 80's and 90's I'd been lucky with ACE, British Council and other funders. But in the late 90's the new government changed the focus of arts funding, which resulted in many of the key funding avenues being closed down (like the new film fund - which happily funded new media projects with reasonably serious amounts of money). The writing was on the wall and the research councils started to look like a better bet, with relatively generous fellowships available, as well as medium to large project funds being available to creative practice based projects, especially if technology was involved (eg: six or seven figures). Things are more competitive now, with less money available and more applicants than ever, but the hit-rate is still better than 10% and, for some funds, much better than that. Follow-on funding, for those who have already held research council funds, is better than 50/50. State funding of the arts is in a dire situation now and it is little surprise that many feel it is pointless to apply - but if you look at it another way, somebody has to apply and you can't win it if you aren't in it. I'd recommend you develop a relationship with one or more sponsoring organisations that can work with you on developing a relationship with the funders. They need to know you a bit, understand what you are doing and why and to develop a trust based relationship. In hard times they are even more risk averse than normal. best Simon On 7 Nov 2011, at 12:09, dave miller wrote: > I'm guilty of this - have never applied for funding. I always assume I'd > never get any and with the scale of the cuts going on, I've more or less > forgotten that funding even exists! > > dave > > > > On 7 November 2011 11:45, marc garrett <[email protected]> wrote: > Arts funding: why so many artists don't apply for the money. > > Dany Louise introduces a report she wrote on arts funding that reveals > some surprising statistics. > > "The key finding is that surprisingly few individual artists apply for > money in their own right and even fewer are successful. In England, less > than 5% of artists apply in their own name every year and of those, less > than 2.5% are successful. This means that there is little direct funding > being given to artists to pursue and develop their own projects, under > their own control: under 20% of available funding for the visual arts in > England, 14% for Northern Ireland and around 18% for Scotland and Wales > in 2009-2010." > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2011/nov/04/arts-funding-artists-dont-apply > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour Simon Biggs [email protected] www.littlepig.org.uk @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk [email protected] Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh www.eca.ac.uk/circle www.elmcip.net www.movingtargets.co.uk
_______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
