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What is the Grand Plan fund for?
Any kind of creative project by a person of colour, aged over 18, living in the UK - for which £1,000 would make a huge difference. This fund is for the creative itches that won’t get scratched otherwise.
It can cover the cost of equipment, courses, your time, materials, travel, and whatever your project needs. However, we won’t part-fund projects where £1,000 doesn’t cover the majority of the cost. We are also unlikely to fund projects where company running costs, marketing, or university projects make up a large proportion of the budget. This is because we want Grand Plan to support wild and wonderful creativity and culture, rather than already profitable companies.
We want Grand Plan to help people make things happen - projects that they might find it hard to resource from elsewhere. You’ve got a great idea, tested it out a bit, and now need support making that next step.
Across the grants we give, we try and fund a range of creative practices from across the UK.
How will the judges pick the projects to give grants to?
Once we have your submissions, the Grand Plan team go through and check that they fit the criteria, scoring them using the questions below to create a long list of approximately 30 to 40 applications. Then the judges read them and meet to make a selection.
The main questions we ask when reviewing your applications are:
Why you? Is there a clear idea of who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing? This might be different from other application forms but we want Grand Plan to be as human as possible, so don’t be afraid to be a human in your writing! Give us a sense of your background, where you are coming from, and what you are passionate about. This will help us know why now is the right time, and why you are the right person to make it happen. This doesn’t have to be very long, conceptual, or include lots of fancy accolades. It might be more relevant to tell us a story about why you are where you are at with your creative work, or who or what has shaped or inspired you.
Why now? Why is this the right time for you to grow your creative project? Tell us what you have done so far to bring this project to life, and how the money would give you a significant boost. Is there an urgent need that this grant will address or have you pushed your work as far as you can? Or tell us how you haven't been able to have this R&D time before, what a difference it would make for your work long term to be able to do so.
Is it realistic to make your project happen for £1,000 or at least cover the majority of costs, and have you given a rough breakdown of how you’d spend the money? For the judges to be able to understand what you need the £1,000 for, it is important to give even a very brief indication of how the money would be spent, broken down into ballpark figures i.e. £200 mentoring, £300 equipment, £400 to pay myself, £100 for materials - or whatever makes sense for your Grand Plan! We don’t need a detailed budget and this can of course change, but give us a rough idea so we can see if your idea is doable with the grant, and why £1,000 will make a difference for you.
And lastly, is it likely that you could get the money elsewhere? We want to fund those projects we feel are not as likely to find support from major funders.
We’ve got an open mind: Use the application form to tell us about your plan! And if you don’t know exactly what you want to make, tell us how you’d approach a research period.