Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund is an innovative five-year programme that aims to invest £10 million into the local communities of Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Waltham Forest, supported by retail destination Westfield Stratford City.
This flagship project will provide new jobs, learning, training and educational programmes through arts, culture, innovation, public realm and creative placemaking.
The programme aims to transform and catalyse the lives and careers of people in East London by putting funding, resources and support straight into local people’s hands.
Our community grant strand offers the following grant schemes:
For years 1-4, now closed:
Each year we have evolved the programme’s design with feedback from our impact evaluation and our ever-growing capacity building network.
Due to this, the application process for successive years is continually modified to ensure the outcomes and impact have a stronger focus on area needs and take a participatory awarding approach.
The Year 5 Community Grant Scheme aims to support local diverse-led organisations and individuals in creating new jobs, learning, skills, training, and educational programmes in arts, culture, innovation, public realm, and creative placemaking.
Unlike previous years, Year 5 community grants have combined previous grant schemes (Small, Medium and Large) into one scheme 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 £200,000. The portal for EOI opens on Monday 22 July 2024 and closes at noon on Friday 20 September 2024.
To be eligible, all projects must address at least one of four key themes:
Applicants must demonstrate at least three short-, medium-, or long-term outcomes aligned to the impact framework initially developed by the Foundation’s grantee partners and local community members. Successful grantees will also participate in peer-led training, networking, and evaluation workshops.
Year 5 community grant-funded projects must run 6-12 months from January to December 2025.
For Year 5 of our Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund, we are once again hosting a Capacity Building Programme, in partnership with award-winning social entrepreneur Lisa Stepanovic MBE.
The Foundation aims to make the fund as accessible as possible. If you haven’t signed up for the Capacity Building Programme, this popular programme is free for all new and previous applicants. It can make a significant difference for applicants in terms of application advice, practical support, and sharing of best practices.
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
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
17 March 2025 6-8pm on Zoom
During this fireside chat and Q&A with Anita, we’ll explore language and the importance of using empowering words.
Join special guest Anita Eade for this fireside chat with Lisa Stepanovic and Zak Addae-Kodua. During this fireside chat and Q&A with Anita, we’ll explore language and the importance of using empowering words when speaking about beneficiaries we work with. We’ll also be discussing equity, shifting power, people-led approaches, funding, strategy, business planning, and everything in between. You’ll learn about different techniques and ways of working to help strengthen your own charity or social enterprise and have the opportunity to ask questions, too.
You will leave with:
“I’m excited that our community has access to this session. Anita inspired me to change the language I used when speaking about the young people I work with at Social Ark. I’ve learned so much from her over the years, and she’s an absolute legend!” – Lisa Stepanovic MBE
This event is 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.
Please register your place and we will send you details about how to participate closer to the time. Places will be made available on a first come, first served basis.
About Anita Eade (was Kerwin-Nye):
Anita is a charity leader with 30 years experience building and running multi million pound programmes and fundraising across multiple funding sources. Currently Director of Fundraising, Marketing and Communications at WWT (a large environment charity) Anita was formerly Director at YHA (youth hostels) and the founder of Whole School SEND (a 2000 strong schools programme with a focus on inclusion.)
Anita is working class and realised early on in her charity career that the charity sector is a middle class culture with power in the hands of a few. Funding and influence held by the largest national bodies. Her work has attempted to put access and inclusion at the core of a charity’s work – rather than as a nice to have at the edges. Language and models of power are key to this – as is calling it out. This does mean she is not always very popular and has been called a ‘difficult woman’ on many occasions. Indeed she is currently designing the t-shirt.
Mother of four kids and her husband are active community workers alongside and are currently in the battle to get their school refusing son to into education.
For access support please contact grants@future.london
We have easy-to-read versions of our Guidance Notes on our grant scheme pages.
To find out our funding news and opportunities, please sign up for our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/gF6X3z.
For all four of the community grants schemes, at the heart of your project there must be a core commitment to one or more of the following:
We appreciate these four overarching areas are a broad spectrum, so to aid understanding of outcomes expected through the grants, we have developed a user-centred process.
Outcomes are the project’s short, medium or long-term goals that will lead to a meaningful impact for communities in the local boroughs. Applicants will be asked to identify a set number of outcomes that their project will achieve. The number of outcomes expected will be based on the grant scheme you are applying for.
We have provided a list of 13 short, medium and long-term outcomes to be selected.
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If you are a Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund grantee, we have a Marketing and Press Guidance section, which has further information and download links for logos.
Download our WEBCFF Impact Framework, co-designed by the Fund’s grantees.
Watch our latest film featuring our Year 2 grantees Eastside, Loop Labs and True Cadence.
The film was produced and directed by Chris Baker with Editor Will Cole and Colourist Harvey Gibson.
In December 2023, we awarded a total of £560,000 to 26 projects.
This includes:
In January 2023, we awarded a total of £668,711 to 37 projects.
This includes:
In 2022, we awarded £786k to 11 Capital Grant Scheme projects.
Year 2 of the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund saw the following grants awarded:
The Fund awarded a total of £1,351,194 to 82 community projects from the Fund’s community strand, consisting of the Small, Medium, Large and Capital Grant Schemes.
Year 2 was designed with evaluation and feedback from Year 1 grantees to ensure that the process is accessible, transparent and allows applicants to make informed decisions, follow a simple applications process and gain additional support when needed.
Year 1 of the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund saw the following grants awarded:
The Fund awarded £660,000 to 36 community projects from the Small, Medium and Large Grant Scheme, benefiting over 7,000 people.
Create opportunities for people of East London
