WMCA Activate Skills Development Grants
wmca@smartersociety.org Grant Information
WMCA Activate Skills
Development Grants
Calling all participants in the West Midlands Creative and Cultural sectors. Have you been wanting to develop new skills to further your creative practice?
The Activate Skills Development Grants programme has been launched to support freelancers, micro and small organisations in the West Midlands Creative and Cultural sectors to fund skills development projects and support the development of skills across the region. The fund will consider all types of skills development or Continuous Professional Development (CPD) from any specific discipline within the Creative Cultural sectors, providing support to individual freelancers as well as small organisations.
Your chosen activity should offer you the opportunity to take a step towards enhancing skills which will provide future growth and development opportunities. This grant program is open to individual artists, freelancers, micro-enterprises, and small organisations working across all creative and cultural disciplines, including (but not limited to) performing arts, visual arts, crafts, literature, museums, heritage, and more.
Applicants can be at any stage of their creative careers - from emerging to established practitioners.
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Eligibility
In order to apply for a grant, you must be:
- A freelancer or small organisation operating within the Creative or Cultural sectors
- Based in the West Midlands
- Able to complete all funded activities by 13th December 2024
Please note - If you have been a recipient of a WMCA International Fund grant, applications for further international travel will be ineligible.
This fund recognises that opportunities for CPD and funding within the cultural sector are often distributed unequally; meaning that those traditionally excluded from careers and opportunities in the Creative and Cultural sectors face structural barriers to these types of opportunities. This application process and questions have been designed in partnership between Better Society and Culture Central, working with members of it’s inclusive network to ensure that this fund will be targeted towards, and benefit these excluded groups the most. The characteristics or identities that we welcome applications from include:
- people from racialised identities
- people that are (d)Deaf, Disabled and/or Neurodiverse
- those who are care-experienced*
- people from a refugee or disadvantaged migrant community
- those from a Gypsy, Roma or Traveller community
- people from a working class/low-income background (or if you have identified as such in the past)
We recognise this is not an exhaustive list, and we encourage applications from people that may have faced barriers to working in the cultural sector (this may be because of age, unpaid caring responsibilities, or being LGBTQ+ for example).
*A care-experienced person is defined as anyone who has been, or is currently in care, or is from a looked-after background at any stage in their life, no matter how short, including adopted children who were previously looked-after.
Key Dates
- Applications Open - Friday 30th August 2024
- Applications Close - Wednesday 18th September 2024 at 11.59pm
- Grant Award Notifications - 4th October 2024
- All Activity to be Completed - Friday 13th December 2024
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