The Creatives Grant is on PAUSE

news up top:

– our grant is on hold because we have lost funding

– if you are interested in funding it, please get in touch

– if you have previously submitted, don’t worry, we’ll still refer to that same pool of submissions when we find a new funder

This is what happened: Creative Debuts funded £23,000 worth of grants which allowed us to give 46 different creative practitioners £500 between Sept 2020-Jun 2024 but they are now redirecting their funding elsewhere to more activism-based work, which, fair enough!

I don’t know how many of you know the origin of how this grant came about. But in summer 2020, we got a message from Creative Debuts' director Calum on Instagram that simply asked if we needed money for anything. ????. If there was anything we wanted to do but couldn’t because we lacked the funding. ???????. I guess it is the question every creative wants to hear. No, the question everyone in the world wants to hear. and yeah, there was something. For a while, we had wanted to start some kind of grant for other writers. We kept seeing writers whose work we enjoyed pop up and then disappear, and we wondered if money and a bit of a public display of affection would help create the appartus to keep those people in work. We thought we should focus on working class writers so the money was going to people who needed it (it’s difficult to get into ‘the arts’ but it is harder to stay in). Calum said yes. It was up to us who got the money each money so we got to work letting people know it existed, the emails rolled in with people putting themselves forward for it, and thus the grant began.

Here is the full list of recipients, you can find more about each person and their work here:

Writers Grant

Sep 2020 Ruskin Smith

Oct 2020 David Ishaya Osu

Nov 2020 Keziah Hodgson

Dec 2020 Amelia Lane

Jan 2021 Muskood Shaikh

Feb 2021 Asmaa Jama

Mar 2021 Cameron Hill

Apr 2021 Orna Kazimi

May 2021 Natalie Tan

Jun 2021 Natalie Dunning

Jul 2021 Dora Maludi

Aug 2021 Ibrahim Hirsi

Sep 2021 Andy Grace Hayes

Oct 2021 Cilla Lafayette

Nov 2021 Polly Manning

Dec 2021 Molly Gough

Jan 2022 Rasha Baraka

Feb 2022 Tuğçe Özbiçer

Mar 2022 Robin Craig

Apr 2022 Trans Safety Network

May 2022 Rutendo D. Bradley

Jun 2022 nil00

Jul 2022 Lottie Walker

Aug 2022 Dallon Robinson

At this point, the grant changed from a writers grant to a general ‘creatives grant’ due to conversations we had with Calum about the cost of living crisis and how the whole industry was under new pressure

Sep 2022 Tomisin Adepeju

Oct 2022 Carrie Stanley

Nov 2022 Sean Prentice

Dec 2022 Sharifa

Jan 2023 Urte Janus

Feb 2023 Alun Hughes

Mar 2023 Sergio L. Lopez Borja

Apr 2023 Ivilina Kouneva

May 2023 JN Benjamin

Jun 2023 Joanne Gallagher

Jul 2023 James McColl

Aug 2023 Laviea Thomas

Sep 2023 Rachael Button

Oct 2023 Tony Onuchukwu

Nov 2023 Udochukwu Emeka-Okafor

Dec 2023 Emily Unwin

Jan 2024 Dino Zhang

Feb 2024 Georgia Madden

Mar 2024 Pádraig Ó Meiscill

Apr 2024 Arzoo Gurung

May 2024 Felix Mufti

Jun 2024 Roy

THAT IS SO MANY PEOPLE. We actually cannot thank Calum enough for doing something he didn’t have to do. 23K is wild when it could have been 0. Of course, we are now trying our best to find other funders so that we can continue supporting more people. If you’re reading this and you want to help carry it on, please get in touch! We know how much it has meant to all the people listed. We want an art scene not dominated by the middle classesssss pleaseeeeeeee ahhhhhhh