Aim
The Year 5 Community Grant Scheme fund aims to support local diverse-led organisations and individuals to create new jobs, learning, skills, training, and educational programmes through the means of arts, culture, innovation, public realm and creative placemaking.
Unlike previous years, Year 5’s community grants have been combined into one strand with a simplified Expressions of Interest (EOI) process.
We will accept EOIs for Year 5 for applications up to £20,000. There is a total pot of up to a maximum of £200,000. The portal for EOI opens on Monday 22 July 2024 and closes at 12pm noon on Friday 20 September 2024.
As in previous years, the application process is expected to be competitive. For this reason, we have strengthened the expected focus of projects and legacy impacts and updated the application process to reflect the smaller funding pot across Year 5.
The scheme is part of the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund, a pioneering five-year programme that aims to invest £10 million, funded by Westfield Stratford City, into the local communities of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. The fund has gone from strength to strength each year, with a further 28 projects awarded a total of £577,000 in Year 4.
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Capacity Building Programme
The Foundation aims to make the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund as accessible as possible. You may have already taken part in this and are part of our excellent network, but if you haven’t signed up to the Capacity Building Programme, delivered by our commissioned partner, Lisa Stepnavoic MBE, this programme is free for all new and old applicants, and can make a great difference for applicants both in terms of application advice, but also support and sharing of best practice.
The programme offers free workshops and a Whatsapp network and is open to anyone living, working or studying in Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets or Waltham Forest.
We encourage you to join this programme by emailing capacitybuilding.ffl@outlook.com
The ongoing aim of the Capacity Building Programme workshops is to support grantees to develop skills and ideas for current or future projects and funding applications. Upcoming workshops will be added to the Foundation’s Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund Capacity Building Programme webpage.
Specific application guidance workshops for each scheme can be booked on the links listed under each scheme section below.
Grant Guidance workshops
Upcoming Grant Guidance Workshops
Wednesday, 4 September 6:30 – 8pm — New Grant Guidance: Pre-application Workshop
Join Lisa Stepanovic MBE and Zak Addae-Kodua for this pre-application workshop. You’ll learn more about the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund as we go through the application process and guidance. Then we’ll have a Q&A where Lisa and Zak will be on hand to answer any questions.
Monday, 9 September 1 – 2:30pm — New Grant Guidance 2024: Pre-application workshop
Join Lisa Stepanovic MBE and Zak Addae-Kodua for this pre-application workshop. You’ll learn more about the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund as we go through the application process and guidance. Then we’ll have a Q&A where Lisa and Zak will be on hand to answer any questions.
Friday, 13 September 5:30 – 7pm — New Grant Guidance 2024: Pre-application workshop
Join Lisa Stepanovic MBE and Zak Addae-Kodua for this pre-application workshop. You’ll learn more about the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund as we go through the application process and guidance. Then we’ll have a Q&A where Lisa and Zak will be on hand to answer any questions.
Monday, 16 September 6 – 7:30pm — One-Page Impact Report Masterclass
Demonstrating your impact is key when it comes to securing funding, sourcing investment, and creating trust in your brand. In this session, we’ll take you through how to pull together a one-page impact report creatively, and concisely with step-by-step guidance, hands-on examples, and a reusable template.
All events are free and open to individuals, organisations and businesses working and living across the local communities in the London Boroughs of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. See all our events on Eventbrite
Funding themes
The scheme will fund projects that focus on one or more of the following funding themes:
Employment opportunities
- Will your project provide employment opportunities for local people, including access to paid work experience / internships, access to apprenticeships or gaining access to jobs?
Learning opportunities
- Will your project provide ladders of opportunity through learning and training opportunities for local people, including accessing lifelong learning opportunities from early learning, schools through to late career and post retirement and/or will the project offer bespoke career and higher education path support, training and secondments?
Young people
- Will your project have a young person led approach with particular provision for local young people to access skills development opportunities, careers workshops and related learning and/or one to one coaching and mentoring?
Business and entrepreneur support
- Will your project provide local people with the opportunity to have business and/or entrepreneur support including freelance, business and entrepreneur set up, development and training?
Outcomes (Impact Framework)
We appreciate these four overarching areas are a broad spectrum, so to aid understanding of outcomes expected through the grants, we have co-designed a user-centered process with our grantees.
Outcomes are the project’s short, medium or long-term goals that will lead to a meaningful impact for communities across the local boroughs. Applicants will be asked to identify a set number of outcomes their work will achieve. The number of outcomes expected will be based on the amount you are applying for.
We have provided a list of 13 short, medium and long-term outcomes to be selected. The number of outcomes your project will be expected to meet will be based on how much funding you are applying for. We will also provide a pre-application workshop on how to approach these outcomes (Impact Framework) and, should you be awarded a grant, further training on using the Impact Framework will also be provided.
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For more information, please see our Guidance Notes.
Need & Local Engagement
In your application, we need to understand what the local need is for your project, how this has been identified and how local people and/or people with lived experience have been involved in the planning and development of the proposed activities. You or your organisation should be able to demonstrate that you have good links and networks in the community to deliver the activities and collaboratively address the proposed outcomes.
In addition to the above outcomes, projects that have considered the below will be weighted more favorably if you can demonstrate the following:
a) You have considered community engagement and consultation
b) You have considered the sustainability of:
- Projects — how new ideas have been developed/how other funding has been leveraged
- Organisation — what areas of learning will happen/what best practice will be developed/how will the project help the organisation grow
- Participants — what longer term opportunities/follow up support is available/ paid work/further training and/or education
Project Activity & Case Studies
Our Fund is about creating inclusive and sustainable opportunity — we are keen to back a range of activities and innovative ideas that drive the proposed outcomes.
The Foundation for Future London is a strong advocate for the ability of creativity to enable levelling up opportunities and to be a strong contributor to the London economy.
Therefore, we are keen to fund project activity that has origins in:
- Arts, Culture, Heritage
- Skills & Jobs
- Business & Start Up
- Community
- Creative Ideas
- Digital
- Collaboration
- Diversity & Inclusion
- Intergenerational
- Health, Wellbeing & Environment
- Education
- Creative, Inclusive Public Realm and/or Placemaking
We have a range of case studies and videos from projects we have funded across Year 1 to 4 of the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund that will help demonstrate the kind of projects we support https://future.london/projects/
Assessment Criteria & Priority Areas
Funding decisions will be based on the merit of your application. The assessment process will utilise a scoring matrix to assess applications to a consistent and fair standard. As per previous years, we will also be taking a participatory grant making approach through the use of an impartially selected community grants panel.
Equality, diversity, and inclusion are at the forefront of the Foundation’s grant giving. We actively encourage applications from all communities including Black, Asian and ethnically diverse, disabled/living with long term health issues, learning disabled, unemployed and/or low waged, people without qualifications, vulnerably housed, Gypsies and Travellers, LGBTQ+, children and young people, older people and people with mental health issues or health issues.
The Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund aims to support diverse-led organisations. In Year 4, 92% of successful grants were distributed to organisations and individuals whose organisations’ senior management and project delivery teams identified as diverse-led.
We want to continue making sure funding opportunities reach a wide audience and support locally rooted charities and community-focused initiatives. We also encourage applications from individuals and organisations led by local people whose projects engage and serve East London’s diverse communities of Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Waltham Forest and Newham.
To get a better understanding of the support areas and beneficiaries the Foundation’s funding seeks to target, see our list of groups in the Appendix.
Previous Awarded Applicants — The Foundation does not exclude applicants who have been previously awarded grants from any strand, and this includes applicants who may have more than one funded project currently running. You are welcome to apply for future funding for new projects. You are also welcome to apply for further funding for an existing project. However in both cases, you MUST have strong evidence of previous impact from previously funded work, ongoing need for the project and demonstrate a compelling case of project development, growth and ongoing future sustainability plans.