Cap In Hand!

Here’s the post I posted to Facebook on my phone about applying to Arts Council England for a grant from the Culture Recovery Fund – it wasn’t going to be an official blog post but the reaction was so overwhelming and generous that I went ahead and posted here as well… as follows…

Not doing a blog post as such this weekend. Instead, I have spent the time up till now preparing a grant application to Arts Council England and the Culture Recovery Fund – which is part of the 1.57 billion allocated to culture.

I’ve done a few grant apps in the past, some have been successful – but never when I have applied to Arts Council England.

Well, I’ve been on webinars, read a lot of notes. Got my head around cash flow forecasts and been as reasonable as I can to work out what we need to carry on as a business until March next year. (Without borrowing thousands more)

Tomorrow I need to rewrite my notes into the number of characters required, add lots of facts and figures and generally justify our importance at Midnight Mango Ltd as an organisation that is worth saving.

If we don’t get it – we are not sure what will happen – but if we do, it will make a huge difference and we will be able to pick up before next summer. Instead of saving every penny and borrowing thousands more – we will be able to go to work and make things happen.

It’s a crying shame that we are dealing with this now and not a couple of months ago – decisions would have been different. Everything this government does with respect to financial help – takes it right up to the wire. We won’t know the outcome of this grant application until October- so, for now, we can’t assume we will get it. And past experience with the Arts Council – as I mentioned- has not been positive.

So as you were folks, we will carry on, flying by the seat of our pants, trying to innovate and make a few quid where we can and working every hour god sends to make some kind of impact in the vague hope we get noticed.

Looks like I did write a blog after all! (almost!

Wish us luck folks – and everyone else who is making this grant application this weekend. We are gonna need it! 😀