ACE has two strands of public funding for individual cultural and creative practitioners, collectives and arts organisations:

• The Develop Your Creative Practice grant (or DYCP)
  Around £14.4 million of ACE funds is allocated for these. DYCP is most used by individual and smaller groups of creatives and is the focus of this article!
• The National Lottery Project Grant or NLPG
  Around £116.8 million of ACE funds is allocated for these.

The national average success rate for submissions to ACE is approximately 10-20%.

You can apply for the funding via Grantium, Arts Council England’s platform for submissions. Currently submissions are open until August 10, 2023, and successful applicants will be announced on November 2, 2023.

Since 2018, the DYCP fund has supported over 4,000 creative and cultural practitioners, both individuals and small groups based in England – across music, theatre, dance, visual arts, literature, libraries, combined arts, and museums practice.

With the grant, you can apply for funds between £2,000 and £12,000. Unsurprisingly, it is an exceptionally competitive grant, as you can only apply three times a year (whereas with the NLPG you can apply all year round).

The DYCP funds creative development opportunities or projects that can last up to a year, such as a period of research and development (R&D), learning new skills, experimenting with a completely different creative or cultural practice.

The DYCP grant is available to creative and cultural practitioners at all stages and levels of their practice. ACE’s definition for who is eligible is broad, encompassing everyone from dancers, writers, producers, musicians, actors and directors, to designers, curators, DJs, arts and cultural educators and creative technicians. Check out their website to see the full list.

In order to apply you must be:

• At least 18 years old

• Have one years’ creative practice experience outside a formal education context (this could include work as a librarian, musician, performing in a dance troupe or circus, exhibiting in an art or non-art setting, performing spoken word, writing for a publication, organising cultural events/programmes, facilitating community art workshops)

• Have a UK bank account in the name you are applying in (if you apply as a small group, one person should submit the application and provide bank details)

The applications for ACE are notoriously complex to get your head around – let alone if you have specific access needs. Thankfully, ACE identified this issue and introduced ‘Access Support’, which also includes support for those involved in the mental health system or with a learning disability.

As an Access Support worker and bid writer, I help alleviate any anxiety around the application process by offering my expertise, guidance and constant encouragement. If you know what to say and how to say it, you won't want to run for the hills when thinking about applying for an ACE grant.

Access Support can be used to help with reading the funding guidance or making an application online, access a BSL interpreter to support you in one-to-one meetings, translating applications made in BSL into written English, as well as assist you with navigating Grantium, the platform where you upload and submit your application.

To secure the support, you will need to submit a request via this online form. As part of the request, you will need to outline your barriers, and share a breakdown of the support you will be getting from your support worker.

In order to submit your application, you have to create a profile on Grantium. This involves adding basic information (including your address).

It can take up to 10 days for ACE to approve your profile so if you wait until the last minute, in the worse case scenario, it could mean you are unable to submit your application. To avoid unnecessary stress, do it sooner rather than later.

The Grantium portal is not very user-friendly, and often crashes. If you are writing your application in the portal and it crashes, you will lose the material you have been working on; there is no undo button on Grantium.

Instead, I strongly advise that you work from a Google Doc to write your application. This also means that you can share your material with other individuals; this could be your Access Support Worker and/or friends so that they can make comments and edits.

In the project timeline within your application, including ‘milestone reflection days’ shows ACE that you are making a conscious effort to assess and learn from the development opportunity.

A ‘milestone reflection day’ is an opportunity for you to review and evaluate your project so far. For example, journaling about your experiences, having check-ins with a support worker, having professional or creative mentor sessions to assess your progress.

I recommend having a contingency budget (a cost that allows for potential events that are not accounted for) in a cost estimate. This should be around 5% of your total budget, as this ensures you have a cash reserve in the event of anything unexpected happening.

If you have not included a contingency in your budget, ACE will view this as a risk and won’t fund the application. By including contingency, you are showing initiative, which fills the marker with confidence. It will also come in handy, I assure you!

Similar to the Access Support you can secure for writing an application, you are also eligible to request Personal Access Costs in your project budget. These costs will be separate to your main budget as they will be covered by ACE.

Personal Access costs include: a support worker to assist in the management of your project (e.g. overseeing your timeplan and budget), a specialist tutor, counsellor, note-taker and/or BSL interpreter.

One of ACE’s main priorities is ensuring creative and cultural practitioners are paid fairly. With this in mind, remember to budget for payment of both yourself and anyone involved. It is always beneficial to use industry rates and to show these in the breakdown of your budget. You can use different payment guidelines for this.

The markers have a lot of applications to go through, so the clearer and more confident it is for them to get an understanding of your project, the better.

Always back up a statement with how you’ll achieve something. Try to avoid writing in a narrative style. Instead, use short sentences and bullet points to outline and breakdown your project.

Arts Council England’s Develop Your Creative Practice funding (Round 18) is open for applications and you can request free Access Support. It closes on August 10, 2023; and successful applicants will be announced on November 2, 2023.

Whether you are neurodivergent or neurotypical, feel free to get in touch with Lara to find out more about how she can support you in submitting an application: [email protected]