Bespoke advice from leading industry professionals – Create a funding application to give you the best chance of success!
Access to funding is key in contemporary music. Most of those who want to enter the profession will need support in some way to create a successful career. Even those who have a successful career still need to get support for projects. The main sources, either directly or indirectly, of that support is through funding bodies – the Arts Councils or private funders.
Applying for support is a skill in and of itself. A skill that takes time to develop and staying power to learn. Writing an application with the (often very tight) constraints the organisation puts on you while attempting to explain clearly how your project ties in with their priorities is hard!
Take the advice from leading industry professionals who are all too familiar with this process. Meet the consultants…
Naomi Belshaw
Naomi has a wealth of experience within the arts, particularly in contemporary music. In 2019 Naomi set up her own consultancy offering composers and artists more formal help in their careers, drawing on her uniquely broad perspective in funding, festival curation, publishing, licensing, royalties, PR, marketing and more. In 2022 she was accepted onto the world’s only independent funding and professional development programme MMF Accelerator, designed exclusively for artists, songwriters, DJ’s and Producer Managers – supported by YouTube Music, Arts Council England and Creative Scotland. Naomi is also currently the Chair of the Three Choirs Festival, thought to be the oldest classical Festival in the world.
… “I was very eager to be involved in this new initiative from the Ivors Academy, as from my experience of running funding programmes at PRS Foundation and being an advisor on a host of other funding schemes, from Help Musicians, to Jerwood Arts as well as applying for funding in many capacities over the years from Arts Council England, Creative Scotland, Arts Council Wales, RVW trust I have seen both sides of the funding landscape and have a broad understanding what might help increase the likelihood of successful funding and the things that can sometimes affect funding panel decisions. I currently in my own business offer consultancy which some composers use for funding advice and I wanted to offer the same help to the Ivors Academy composer community”.
Matthew Whiteside
Since 2014, fundraising has been a key part of Matthew’s work. The first successful application Matthew wrote was for his debut album ‘Dichroic Light’ which was supported by Creative Scotland. Since then, Matthew has written many successful applications to the arts councils and private funders to support both his own work as a composer and the development of his charity – The Night With…
…”This pilot project allows you to get advice and support on your application from those, like myself, with years of successful funding experience. Everyone involved frequently sits on funding panels and has years of experience successfully fundraising. Thought the Get Funded Scheme we can give you advice to help you learn the skills of writing applications to support the development of your career.”
We offer all Ivors Academy members up to 3 hours of advice from an experienced consultant on 1 funding application from the following Organisations:
- Arts Council NI
- Arts Council England
- Arts Council Wales
- Creative Scotland
- Help Musicians
- PRS Foundation
- Vaughan Williams Foundation (formerly the RVW Trust)
- Youth Music
Members are permitted to use this service once per funding application and you can only have one application in for review at a time. If demand is high for the service, we may have to limit the number of applications submitted by an individual member in a six-month period.
Before using this service, please ensure you have:
- Looked through our list of available organisations with funds supporting music and ensured you have selected the correct fund for your project
- Have read through our guide on funding application best practice
- Watch our webinar on funding applications
- Please allow at-least a minimum of 3 weeks before your deadline to get the best feedback possible and give yourself enough time to use the feedback
Any information submitted to this service will never be shared with anyone outside of the Academy Membership Team and our paid advisors who have all signed Non-Disclosure Agreements.
PLEASE NOTE: This service does not guarantee that you will receive the funding you are applying for.
