We’re joined by Polly Barker, Marie Klimis and Natasha Stanton to explore how organisations and individuals approach seeking funding, to create work in immersive contexts. From applying for public funds, through to the requirements of research bodies and third sector trusts and foundations – we get into the nitty gritty raising funds for immersive experiences.
Guests:
Polly Barker is Punchdrunk Enrichment’s Head of Development, leading fundraising with individuals, Trusts & Foundations, and corporate partners. Polly studied English Literature at Sussex before beginning her career in the Museum sector, working at the V&A in London, and at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide. Polly loves learning, the visual arts, travelling and is writing a novel in her spare time. https://www.punchdrunkenrichment.org.uk/, https://www.instagram.com/punchdrunkenrichment/
Marie Klimis is is currently Senior Producer at Coney. She has worked as a Producer and Project Manager for a range of organisations, including the City of London Festival, Horniman Museum, Pure Expression or Arts and Gardens. She is a founding member and director of 27 degrees, a migrant-led collective specialised in socially-engaged immersive theatre. As a writer and designer, she specialises in intimate immersive projects in unusual spaces, including “I am Bird and The Paper Traveller”, two choose-your-own-adventure projects in library spaces. https://www.instagram.com/marieklimis/
Natasha Stanton is a Senior Portfolio Manager at the Economic and Social Research Council and previously was a Senior Investment Manager at the Arts and Humanities Research Council and an International Stakeholder Engagement Manager at UKRI (UK Research and Innovation). https://www.linkedin.com/in/natasha-stanton-8413b589/
Hosted by Dr Joanna Bucknall and produced by Natalie Scott for the Immersive Experience Network’s, Knowledge Bank. Funded by Arts Council England.
Podcast Transcript
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Welcome to the Immersive Experience Network’s Making Immersive podcast series, giving you the tools and insights into the making of all things immersive and interactive. I’m your host, Dr Joanna Bucknall, and over the course of this series, I’ll be having conversations with extraordinary creatives, production specialists and makers who shape this tantalising sector and the worlds that draw us into this form. In this episode of IEN’s Making Immersive Podcast, the discussion is going to focus on different approaches to seeking funding from public and third bodies to create work in immersive contexts, from performance to digital and tech focused practices.
We’ll be spending the next hour or so doing a deep dive into how to source public funding and opportunities within the trust and third sector space, as well as heritage and research funding streams. I’m here this morning with Natasha Stanton who is based at the ESRC, which is part of UKRI. Natasha looks after the commercialisation as part of the innovation and impact team. I’m also here with Polly Barker, who’s head of development for Punchdrunk Enrichment, and Marie Klimis, Senior Producer at Coney, and a founding member and director of 27 Degrees.
Thank you very much for joining me. I think it’s super useful to get a sense of where people came from, what your background is, just because a lot of people listening might be new or emerging, and so just to get a sense of how you got to where you got to in your careers, I think is quite useful. Natasha, could I begin with you, if possible, just a bit about your background and how you ended up at UKRI.
Natasha Stanton
Yes, sure. Thanks so much for inviting me along. I was actually doing a PhD in mediaeval history, and I’ve always been really passionate about public engagement with research and that impact focus, I suppose. But through my PhD, I was really struggling with my mental health. I became really unwell, and then I happened to fall pregnant with my eldest son, so the combination as well. My funding didn’t cover childcare costs, so it was really frustrating. My husband already worked for the research councils, so yes, after I’d had my son, I thought, I’m going to see if I can carve out a career in a slightly different direction.
I moved into doing communications at the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and through that, I’ve just woven my way through UKRI doing different things from communications to policy. Now I’m in programs and I really enjoy that. I’ve now ended up in ESSC, economic and social science research, and so within that, I look after commercialisation, which is very much about that impact focus of what we do. It’s a bit of a curveball for quite a lot of our community, and we might explore some of that today, I imagine. But yes, there’s a lot of ex-researchers at UKRI, and we do things a slightly different way.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Brilliant. Thank you so much. Also, I think in terms of transparency, I am currently the recipient of an art accelerate shape grant, and Natasha is my lead contact at UKRI for the grant that I’m currently working with, which is actually also going to be funding some of the work that the Immersive Experience Network is doing as well. There is a connection there that I just wanted to acknowledge, basically. Thank you, Natasha. Polly, can you talk a bit about your background and what brought you to working in the space that you’re working in?
Polly Barker
Yes, thanks, Jo. I started off working in museums initially after studying English Literature at university, and I got into fundraising through working at an Australian museum. I lived in Adelaide, Australia for five years. Once I started getting a bit more involved in fundraising work and working with the board, I discovered that I really loved it and had an aptitude for that. I moved back to London about five years ago, and had always been super passionate about the theatre. I’d always been taken to a lot of theatre when I was a kid, and really, really loved what it gave me. I discovered Punchdrunk Enrichment’s work at that time and really fell in love with it. It’s been a privilege to try and seek funding to make that work happen. Punchdrunk Enrichment is a brilliant organisation. We’re a very small fundraising team within a team of about 20 across the charity altogether, so it can be incredibly challenging, but also really rewarding.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
There’s not too much of a shift either, because Punchdrunk Enrichment intersect with heritage and cultural sites with the work that they do, so I’m not surprised you got caught up in their magic, to be honest.
Polly Barker
Yes, absolutely. The work takes place in all different settings. We do a lot of work in primary schools. We also go into different arts centres or community settings. The work falls in all different environments, but the idea is that the journey that the audience member goes on is very much their own. It’s not restricted to sitting down and being a passive member of the audience.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Thank you so much. Marie, how about you? What brought you to where you are and to working with Coney as well?
Marie Klimis
Originally, I graduated from a business school in Brussels, then came to London to do a degree in arts management, and I worked for about 10 years as a produce project manager for a range of art organisations specialising in site-specific and outdoor work in both museums and public spaces. Then after 10 years, I decided to join the circus, and so I trained as a theatre maker at Central School of Speech and Drama where I met my two partners in crime of 27 Degrees. We founded an immersive theatre company, which is also a migrant-led collective specialised in making socially engaged work in unusual spaces.
Since then, I’ve been working both as a freelance producer and freelance theatre maker. Then two years ago, I’ve joined Coney as senior producer, and I’ve joined them for a range of … working on a range of commissions from the Golden Key, which was a large-scale immersive takeover of the City of London. We’re launching a new show at Shoreditch Town Hall, 1884, which is an immersive game theatre show about the 1884 Berlin conference and lack of memorialisation of decolonial protest movements. We do also a lot of work in heritage sites, which is about engaging audiences with collections and complex history, new and playfulness.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Thank you so much. I wanted to start by opening up with quite a big question. I wanted to ask all of you what you think are the benefits of making work that is supported and funded by public third sector or trust funding, as opposed to potentially engaging in funding practices that might be more corporate or investment-based. What are the joys of working in this space, but also the responsibilities?
Natasha Stanton
We’re the UK’s largest funder of research and innovation. Actually, what not a lot of people know is that in terms of an arm’s length body from government, we’re second largest only to the NHS, so we’re really big, but often not heard of. But like you say, I think it’s really important that we talk about opportunities, the joys, and the challenges. One of the joys, really is, again, it goes back to that impact focus, what are we here to do?
At the end of the day, we are taxpayer funded, we are funded through that. Our jobs as investment managers, program managers, all the different councils have different names for them, we are there to steward that money well. Part of that is to evaluate how well that money has been spent, and part of that’s to plan how we can make it better in the future. But obviously that comes with a lot of challenges as well, especially in terms of, in this space with immersive tech and tech in general, actually.
In terms of that intersection with companies, with businesses, at what point does this become a business venture where we need to take that step back, and whereas at research and innovation funding? Then going back to first principles of what’s the benefit this can have for the taxpayer who’ve ultimately paid for this?
Dr Joanna Bucknall
That’s often the central theme, actually, of most money that’s coming from public funding of one kind or another, because Arts Council is also public money. It’s that stewarding and the sense that it needs to be well spent and good value for money as well. That’s something as makers we have to hold with us and have robust ways of not only managing the money in that way, but also capturing, like you said, and evaluating money.
It’s so interesting because the general public who pay for UKRI probably aren’t particularly aware of it. But as a researcher myself, UKRI is a massive part of my life because academics are almost entirely … that’s our main source of funding to source our activities. But there are definitely ways I think artists can intersect and makers can intersect, especially within innovation and impact and public engagement. Because not all UKRI schemes are open to artists, if that makes sense.
Natasha Stanton
Absolutely. Especially in the arts and culture sector, I think we’re in many ways very much behind the scenes. Many years ago, there was a really large exhibition. I think it was at the British Museum, but I may have got that wrong, and it was Hokusai. Why this was really important to us as UKRI was that AHRC had funded all that underpinning research that had gone into making this exhibition. Sometimes we want to put our hands up and say, “Hey, we helped do that.” Other times, as you say, it’s learning to take that step back.
But yes, exactly, we’re so involved in the research and innovation landscape, and there are … In the space that we’re moving into, I think there’s an increased ask of us to look at how we broker partnerships and how we start linking people together. So that opens up conversations with the universities, with research organisations and with businesses as well. That’s something that we’re moving to explore more, and what our role is within that as well.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Polly and Marie, could you talk a bit about what some of the challenges might have been of working in that public money space or trust space or third sector space? Because a lot of them have a similar ethos. They come with a responsibility that other forms of investment don’t, I think.
Polly Barker
Absolutely. Well, I can talk about it from the point of view of seeking funding from trusts and foundations. It is incredibly challenging I think the sheer volume of competition going for often quite small pots of money. I know that the people who sit on those boards would like to be able to fund more work than they can, so it comes down a lot to getting out as many applications as you can, which can in some ways be a bit of a scattergun approach at times.
But the best way that we found to approach it is when you are able to build relationships that stand the test of time and find funders that are willing to provide multi-year funding for small charities. That can be an absolute lifeline. Although it is difficult, there are funders out there that are willing to really get to know organisations, and not just on an individual project by project basis, but also to look at the overall mission and what the charitable focus is of the organisation maybe over the next five or 10 years. But it’s essentially all related to relationship building. That’s the key that we’ve found.
Marie Klimis
I think bouncing back on that, a lot of the work that I do both as a solo theatre maker with 27 Degrees and with Coney, a lot of it is a combination of commission work and funding from the Arts Council. A lot of it, as you said, is single funding for a single project, and the key is really to be able to build relationships with commissioners so that you can work over a long period of time, but also so you can build replicable models.
But with those relationships, also come a lot of challenges. If you work as part of a commission, it’s a partnership really. It’s not just your project, it’s our projects, and we need to make sure that the vision for the project, the set of priorities, that they align. Sometimes it’s very tempting to see, “Oh, there is that big pot of funding for a big commission. Let’s just go for this. It has nothing to do with what we do, but we can build something for all that.” But I think it’s really important to think, “Is this what I really want to do? Is this really us? Can I get to know that funder before I commit to the commission to make sure that we want the same thing or that we can find a good common ground?”
Which is really exciting, really challenging at the same time. It can be a lot of difficult conversations to navigate. Again, if you work with commissioners for repeated commissions, then you get to know each other better and you work together better, but it can be quite challenging sometimes.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Like you said, it’s well worth acknowledging, and it’s the same as well with UKRI, the success rates are quite small because it’s so competitive. Also, the processes that you have to go through are often extremely challenging and time consuming and have to be articulated in very particular ways. Talking about relationships, saying relationship building is really important and partnership enabling is really important, how do you make that initial start at that? Is it a case of chuck an application in to something you think you would have a good fit with that person and then hope to cultivate a relationship, or does it start in a different way?
Polly Barker
For us, it can certainly start in that way, and often, what we’ll try and do is say, “Please come along and see our work.” I call it the penny drop moment. It’s hard to demonstrate impact sometimes. Not that many people outside of the immersive sector know that much about immersive work, and especially immersive education, which is where the cross section of Punchdrunk Enrichment’s work comes in with the cultural sector. Inviting people to come and see projects in the schools and to see audience reactions to work is absolutely crucial, but it’s very difficult because people are certainly pressed for time. That’s one approach.
Then, also increasingly leaning on other contacts for introductions. We’ve got a fantastic board of trustees, and where they can, they will make introductions to other organisations or people who might sit on decision-making boards, so that’s really crucial. I think that’s where senior leadership can play a really big role in ensuring that we’ve got the right people on the board who can help make introductions and are willing to have different conversations with different people.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
That’s really good to hear. Actually, this is a thread that’s run across everyone we’ve talked to in all the different contexts. We’ve talked to them so far as how absolutely crucial networking, relationship building, and partnership and collaboration is to all aspects of this field of work. It’s really heartening as well, actually, to hear that it’s still human relationships that are so central to what we do. How about you, Marie?
Marie Klimis
Absolutely. I think that for us, we are always very surprised how we get commissions because we always get commissions from previous partners who told other people about how great we are, because we are. We are always very surprised about the weird journey of information about how people find out about our work, but it’s also … It’s those past relationships, but it’s also something that’s very hard as theatre makers to find the time to properly document your work and to properly get the right resources to document it, then to share it, to make sure that people know about it. Because everyone is pressed for time, budgets are very small, especially the publicly-funded sector.
It’s making sure that when you’ve got your projects, document them well, make sure that you share them widely, and then put yourself out there. Go to conferences, go to symposiums, go to anywhere where people who were interested about that kind of work go. For example, with Coney, we do a lot of work in heritage sites at the moment, and it took us a few years to really build that documented expertise. We’ve been working in the heritage sector for years, but it’s only for the last few years that we’ve started to be really good at shouting about it and having good resources. Now people know, so now people approach us to do the work we do in heritage sites.
Natasha Stanton
For us, that reflects into the idea of that evaluation piece again. Actually, we find ourselves often in a very similar situation when we’re really pushed for time and spending reviews and all these other pressures that we have, that evaluation tends to be the thing that we can treat it as a bit of a bolt on. Obviously, we really shouldn’t be doing that, and we don’t, we have it so woven in, but it can sometimes fall to the bottom of the priority list. I think one of the real challenges that we have, especially again, in the arts and culture sector is that with the science space, with STEM, in some ways it’s, I don’t want to say easier to capture impact, but it’s more tangible.
It’s quite easy to say X number of people are now immune to COVID, or if we ever, I don’t know, scientists … But it’s a lot harder to evaluate the impact that the interventions that we have do within the social science space, within the arts, culture, people space. I thought it was interesting as well. I think, Marie, you mentioned about a 10-year timeline, or maybe, Polly, sorry, a 10-year charity timeline, if that’s what you’re looking for, but actually, often funding rounds are three to five years. Five years if you’re lucky, and that might include a no-cost extension.
How do you factor in that meaningful evaluation? Especially when we’re working with young people, with children, with future generations, actually. Say, within the music sector, I have a very close friend of mine who works for Spitalfields charity in London and she was telling me the other day that something like there were no children in Tower Hamlets, Borough that took A level in music. Please feel free, anybody, to check me up on that, but it was more or less to that.
It’s not going to be until 10, 15 years’ time that we really start noticing the impact that that’s going to have on those communities and those individuals. It’s really hard for us, I think, in our sector, to be looking at and to put ourselves out there and to say, “Well, this is the value of our work.” Actually, we’ve got a real battle ahead of us, I think, to do that.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
I agree and I think we are in quite a hostile arts environment, and so I think we’re always … Not even just for funding requirements or requirements of funders, but also within that public sphere space trying to demonstrate value beyond that commercial impact or that financial impact of going, “Actually, this has value for human beings.” I wonder if there’s a future where we can utilise things like this shift towards social prescribing, and that attitude to really help bring out the significance and the more diffused or holistic value of what it is that we do on people’s actual lives.
But you’re right, capturing that is challenging, and so this leads me into my next question that I wanted to throw out for everyone. Nearly all of these fundings do require some evidence, collecting, evaluation, and some reporting of impacts to the funder, whoever that funder might be. I wanted to find out if you have any strategies that you use that the people listening might be able to factor in when they start to think about this work. Because the one thing I think Natasha said is it’s very time-consuming, which it is extremely time-consuming to do this evaluation.
What strategies that you might have that people listening might be able to use, or are they bespoke to every project? Do you have to start again every time you have a funder, every time you have commission, or every time you have a project?
Marie Klimis
I think as much as it is time-consuming, I find it helpful to have them bespoke, because I feel like the immersive sector is so vast, and the type of spaces and audiences and communities we work with can be so different than having a one-fit-all evaluation strategy. It makes no sense. I feel, also, depending on who you work with, some people will be very excited to fill in a feedback form. Some people will just not do it. I think instead of looking at evaluation as something that is a drain, to me, I find it very useful to help you think about your project from the start.
I think before any project, I think it’s just really getting the team together. The team can be just your creative team, sometimes it’s you and your funder or commissioner, depending on where the money is coming from, and to think about, “Okay, what is this? Who do we want to engage with? What impact do we want to have?” Because even if it does help with evaluation down the line and reporting, it also really helps you making some good work, and also to be really realistic about how can we measure this in a way that feels meaningful and that will, again, not put your audience off when you ask them?
For example, at Coney, we work with an impact fellow at the University of Bath Spa, Astrid Breel, who’s absolutely brilliant. If you ever want to do anything with evaluation, talk to Astrid. She helps us build a bespoke evaluation strategy. What’s really exciting when we talk with her is sometimes she’s like, “Okay, what is meaningful for the project? If it’s annoying to capture this, then let’s not. Let’s just find something that feels right.” Sometimes it can be very simple in a way of measuring who’s coming and how they felt about it, and it can be integrated in the show. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a feedback form at the end.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Because I find that they only go so far to do. Like you said, some people … If you’re engaging children who aren’t even at the point yet of being able to articulate themselves in written forms, that’s not going to be very helpful.
Marie Klimis
No, and sometimes it’s also about thinking, what is really important to capture? Because I’ve been to shows where at the end, they give you evaluation forms that takes 15 minutes to fill in, and you would say, “Do you really need all of this? Or what is it really that you want to capture?” Sometimes what you really want to capture is two questions. I think it’s just boiling down what’s really important, what really helps you to do your best work, to improve the quality of your work down the line, and if it helps with funders, recording, reporting, all the better.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
I think it’s very heartening as well to hear about embedding that right from the beginning of the project as well. Like you said, you get much more meaningful because it’s then tied in with the objectives of the project overall. I think that’s great for people listening to hear that it needs to be thought about, because like Natasha said, often, especially in research, it gets bolted on at the end, and then you’re scrambling around trying to find stuff. I think that more meaningful embedding I think is good practice, and I think the more we can encourage and share that, certainly as an academic myself, I’m like, that’s a good thing. That’s a really good thing. How about for you?
Polly Barker
At Punchdrunk Enrichment, we have also started working a lot more with academics to help us demonstrate and evaluate our work. So we’ve had some funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for a four-year study, which is helping us look at our work with eight different primary schools over a long term, over the four years, and let us work with different organisations to develop a framework that we can actually use across all our projects. It may work 100% with all our projects, or it may need to be adjusted.
We’re going through that process at the moment, and we’re working with Goldsmiths, University of London, an agency called i2 media. They’re really helping us and taking the time to get to know our work. We work with an awful lot of very young children from early years through to around about 11 or 12, so key stage one and two and early years. We want children’s voices to be part of the evaluation. Also, we work a lot with teachers, so their impact is — their assessments of our work is really crucial. But going back to what you were saying about funders sometimes do need very tangible statistical information. Our work doesn’t particularly lend itself to that. If there are measures and frameworks in the future, you were talking about social prescribing, if there were more of those measures out there that have recognition, that would be very helpful, I think.
Natasha Stanton
Hopefully, this is good news. As UKRI, this is something we are really conscious of. I think we ran a program many years ago with the Global Challenges Research Fund, and the paperwork that we used belonged to EPSRC, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Some of the poor old applicants, they had to put what was the contribution to UK engineering, and that’s when we realised, “This paperwork is not fit for purpose,” and so we are really overhauling the system. I think, A, there’s the sense of just the internal how it works side to things, but also, critically, from the impact and evaluation side, externally, the work that you are doing, actually, how can we capture that?
I think what you were saying around working with children, and actually if they want to get out of it, there’s some really good practice that we have learned from GCRF, the Global Challenges Research Fund, because that was a fund that came from the UK Aid budget, and so it was super, super stringent in terms of how we had to run it. The real key focus there was doing research with people, not at people, and if you don’t have them on board right from the beginning, it’s just never going to work.
I think especially as we’re moving into these questions around AI and around technologies in the workplace and all of these things, it’s really changing. If we don’t have people on board, it’s just not going to work. From ESRC’s perspective, that’s the expertise we’re hoping to bring to the table on that.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
This leads into the next question really nicely, actually, because both of you mentioned working with academics and working with academic institutions. I was going to ask you, Natasha, how creatives might find roots into building collaborations with academics, but also accessing some of the … Because it’s not a natural home for creatives. First thing that pops into your mind in terms of public funding is probably Arts Council. But actually, there are these different pots of money that researchers can access, and wanted to just ask you a little bit about how might makers access that? How might they start to build relationships?
Natasha Stanton
There’s a couple of avenues really. We have the more sectoral work that we are doing. One of the big funds we had was industrial strategy challenges fund. Again, that was a government fund, hundreds of millions of pounds, very sectoral level work. Similarly, AHRC run the creative industries clusters program, millions and millions of pounds. These funds look at doing huge pieces of work that are often a hub and spoke model, and with universities as a lead centre.
Then we devolve that funding to the universities to work locally and find their own collaborators, and find the ways that works for them locally. That works really well in terms of the place making agenda as well. But very mindful, often that trickle down is not always noticeable for your artists down the road. What difference actually has that made to their lives? For those children in Tower Hamlets, how are they going to access A level music? What difference is it going to make?
This is where they’re … On the other approach, it would be the catalyst model that we’re running. So ESRC in partnership with AHRC, we’re running commercialization catalysts, which is what Joanna was referring to, as an award holder, where these are much smaller pots of money, but they’re far more targeted at something specific. Actually, most of our award holders, they have a local impact in mind. There’s something really local that they want to achieve. The upshot is, either side of those funds, partnership is always welcome.
If you are a creative, if you are a local artist down the road, or a musician, or whatever it is that you do, actually, be bold, get in contact with your researchers that are relevant to what you’re interested in doing, what’s the impact you want to achieve, really. Then just in terms of the application process, there’s always … We look for partnerships, we look for Co-I’s and PIs that would be your academic bunch, and then you have your project partners and other people who are involved in different and quite creative ways.
Actually, often a strong application will have really interesting partnerships that will shore up those bits that within academia might be a bit weak. For example, local knowledge and expertise, or in an international development context, it could be language expertise and cultural expertise. Or there’s an example from Bristol on domestic violence, and actually, we’ve got the researchers, then we’ve got the NHS and the practitioners, and then we’ve got charity third sector workers who know the community and know how to work there, and that’s so essential to moving research forward.
I think it’s being bold and being aware that we are open to that, and if anything, that makes a really strong application. Academics, I hope you hear that too.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
I was going to just pull very quickly two things that I’ve heard. Firstly, the process can actually be quite intimidating in terms of actually filling out the application. The academic institution that you partner with will be responsible for that. If you’re listening and thinking, “Arts Council is hard enough,” and this is along a similar line, but the university will do the heavy lifting. They will be the institution that has to get that in for you, and so they have loads of support. It’s not just the academic who’s doing that or the group of academics, they have lots of professional services support.
Don’t be intimidated by that technical side of things because the institutions are set up to exactly do that, and we will cover that. But you both actually, Marie and Polly, you both mentioned specific academics that you’re working with, or teams. How did those relationships come about? Or have you got any advice for how people might start other than going and looking at someone’s public profile? How have you cultivated those partnerships with universities?
Marie Klimis
Sorry, I’m blank because I realise that I don’t really know how they came up. I feel like the academic I mentioned, Astrid, she’s been one of our associates for a really long time. But I think we tend to do the type of work that academics like, so we keep being approached by different universities and academics to do new projects. To be fully honest, this is not part of work at Coney that I’m working on, but I know that we’re always a bit surprised about the fact that we are approached by existing and new contacts who are just like, “Oh, can you help us to explore this particular topic?”
I think similar to what I was saying earlier about working in the heritage sector is I think there is a lot of word of mouth. For example, we’ve worked with UCL on quite a few projects and people know that, and then we’re approached from a different part of UCL, or researchers who are working with UCL. I feel like there is that word of mouth that does happen. We’ve rarely approached an academic we didn’t know with a particular idea. We tend to have people coming to us, which is really a poor piece of advice because …
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Not at all. But I think it’s important to understand how … Because it’s very organic. Actually your positionality, or certainly Coney’s positionality, and the length of time they’ve been going and the work they’ve been making, sits within a certain space, doesn’t it, in the landscape. I think it is important to recognize that, and so of course, researchers like myself included. But I think Astrid as well is a practitioner scholar too, and so there’s that one foot in the making creative space as well, that often, in my experience, anyway, of colleagues who work with these partnerships, tend to sit across both of those communities so that they understand research, but also understand creative practice as well.
Marie Klimis
Yes, I feel that generally it’s important to work with academic practitioners who do understand your work, especially when it comes to Coney, because a lot of people don’t understand what we do, because we do a lot of very different things. I feel like we often had relationships with people who have come to see your work as audience members and enjoyed it, and happened to be academics, and then like, “Oh, by the way, I have that pot of funding, and I’ve always been wanting to do something with you guys, so is this it?”
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Brilliant. Thank you. Polly, how about you?
Polly Barker
Similarly, we work with an academic called Dr Angela Colvert, and she’s at the University of Sheffield, but was quite recently at Roehampton, and she’s been a very long-standing collaborator and partner of Punchdrunk Enrichment. I believe she initially came to us and was asking us some questions about our work, and we’ve developed a relationship from there. She’s very involved, very supportive, and has most recently been helping evaluate some of our work with early years children and practitioners.
Then we’ve also … It came about slightly differently with the University of London, Goldsmiths, because we were looking for an evaluation partner specifically for a new project, and we put a tender out there. We met with different organisations, some were academics or university-based, and some were different types of agencies that work in the research sphere. We were able to meet lots of different people and work out who would be the best partner for us on that project, and that’s how we ended up working with i2 media.
We’ve also had academics on our board of trustees. Again, they may have initially come to the work through being an audience member or even bringing a group of students to see a production, and then we’ve developed a relationship with them, and hopefully mutually beneficial.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
I wanted to ask a very nuts and bolts … Actually, where would someone who’s new and emerging even find out about different funding schemes, trusts, or commissions? Is there a particular space where you can go to find out about those calls or those commissions, or is it about relationships?
Marie Klimis
It’s both, obviously, but I feel like a lot of my work as a solo theatre maker and 27 Degrees, which is an emerging theatre company, a lot of our work has been based on call outs for commissions. The Artsadmin … I forgot the name of that newsletter. The Artsadmin newsletter is amazing in terms of most opportunities advertised there. Art Jobs as well is pretty good. Then if there are particular organisations that you like, just follow them on social media, register for their newsletter. I feel like as a new theatre maker who’s interested in immersive, it’s often a very good way to start. The advantage of commissions is the fact that you can start with fairly small scale commissions, but then that’s your match funding for the Arts Council, so it’s usually a good way to start.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Polly, how about you? Is there a site that has connections or commissions other than Artsadmin?
Polly Barker
From the perspective of looking at trust and foundation incomes, which is where I spend a lot of my time searching, we use a good resource called Funds Online, which is a paid for subscription, but it’s quite competitive, and there’s a fantastic database essentially where you can be searching by keyword or by geographical area or by theme or topic. Then there are local resources as well. We’ve recently relocated to the London Borough of Brent. We’re just very close to Wembley Stadium, and Brent Council actually has a funding resource that anyone local can sign up to and see what different funding is available. We’ve found that to be really helpful.
We’ve mentioned it already, but relationships and just asking other people, “How have you got on with your fundraising this year? Have you had any new connections?” Sometimes people are really willing to share their good luck and their good news with you, and sometimes that can translate into more funding. Because if someone’s interested in funding work with a particular impact in a particular area, they could also be a good partner for you.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Natasha, how might people find, not just about the research funding, but how to potentially become involved? Because there’s a lot of cluster-type calls at the moment.
Natasha Stanton
Again, it’s a challenge, isn’t it? These really big funds and then the smaller funds as well. I think on a really basic level, we have the UKRI funding finder, it’s a website. It’s just Google it and you’ll find it. But what I would say with that is don’t be put off if something at first doesn’t sound like it fits what you’re interested in doing, whether you’re an academic or an artist or a creative, whatever space you’re in, business person. I would look at it from a, what’s the aims and the objectives of what this particular fund is trying to do?
For example, there’s a particular project program, I think it’s hosted at Bath Spa as well—People-Led Digitalization, and that’s looking at digitalization in the manufacturing space. There’s lots of work actually looking around VR, augmented reality, immersive tech. On one hand, they seem like millions of miles away from each other. On the other hand, actually, when you start looking at the intersectionality of those things, it starts to suddenly make sense, and it starts pinging out ideas for people. What I would say is, if you’re … Also, sorry, on that, so the Royal College of Art actually receives more funding from EPSRC than AHRC just by nature of actually what the funds do. Have a look on funding finder, but don’t be put off if something doesn’t feel like it fits you immediately.
The second thing I would say, but actually, Joanna, maybe this is something more you can help us with, is approaching those academics who have that interest, who are looking to do something in that space that maybe don’t have the connections themselves to start taking their work outside of the university. You’re on a joint mission, so you need to team up and start making it happen. So, Joanna, from your perspective, how does it feel as the academic if you’re looking to partner with somebody? How is it for you?
Dr Joanna Bucknall
The work that I’ve been doing and the funding that I’ve had and the partnerships that I’ve had have been very organic. But I am quite unusual in my space, not so much in theatre space. Most theatre academics have some relationship or connection with practice or the creative sector. But there’s a lot of pressure in arts and humanities, broader subjects, for academics to start showing the value of their research outside of the institution. Lots of institutions have a civic duty now embedded in their strategic plans as well and it is a challenge.
I think a lot of academics are probably as tentative as artists as well about doing that. I think there’s a lot of work … Most universities at the moment are trying to facilitate and help academics make and meet partners and build those collaborations. My advice to academics, if you’re going, “I don’t have those connections. I spend my time in archives and I’m not used to working outside of the institution,” which is the case a lot of the time, actually, your own institution probably are holding a number of events at the moment where they’re bringing existing cultural partners and making offers for others, and it’s usually regional or local. Get on those mailing lists. Contact your, it’s called a TTO office, which is a tech transfer office. Some are called innovation and enterprise offices. Different institutions call them different things, but ultimately their remit is to broker those relationships between academics and between the wider world, whatever that might mean.
Natasha Stanton
Just on the tech transfer office point as well, and that’s a piece of work that ESRC we’re looking at and working with PraxisAuril to explore a bit what we mean by tech transfer office. Actually, that can be really unhelpful as a term. I know that as a historian, if someone told me to go to a tech transfer office, “You’re trolling. What are you talking about?” Don’t be put off by that, but also, if anything, flip it around, be encouraged that actually you as the arts, culture, social science academic, you’re thinking, “I want to take this out of my research organisation.” It might be that at first it feels a bit resistant or it feels a bit difficult, but actually, that’s because you’re pioneering in that space. Go for it, and UKRI will support you in that as far as we can. But that’s the direction of travel that we’re heading in. We’re looking at the whole national, international infrastructure of how we can do that. We’re so fortunate that we’re in a position that we can have those conversations and we can do that. Don’t be put off if it doesn’t feel like a natural fit because actually you can start shaping that. It’s a big thing to do, but you can do it.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
I wanted to ask as well, just thinking about sustainability, really, so … Actually, and Immersive Experience Network are in this position at the moment, so we’ve been really fortunate at being able to access various bits and bob of public funding, research funding. But at the moment, actually, it’s really challenging to find a consistent, sustainable revenue source that will facilitate the effort and the work that sits behind that fundraising effort, if that makes sense. I wanted to ask, beyond relationships and building those things and going back to people, what are the strategies that are used to build something sustainable that allows some of the activity that takes a bit longer to unfold or to develop? Maybe advice for people that might be listening.
Marie Klimis
To be really honest, it’s really hard. Because, yes, again, both as a theatre maker and with Coney, a lot of our work has been commission-based historically, and I think there is no straightforward answer. I generally find it really hard. I think it’s about building replicable models that can be reused for commissions. That’s one of them. We used to do a lot of completely different types of commissions with completely different shapes, completely different audiences, and then you need to start again from scratch, and it’s very time consuming, it’s very draining, and it’s expensive because you need to … Nobody funds that preparation work.
So a lot of it is about to try to think about your work and think, “Okay, what is it about my work that I want to keep doing over and over again and bring it to different people, to different spaces?” Almost package it up. I think it’s also about killing some darlings, sometimes about accepting the fact that maybe you need to do less things so that you focus on the work that’s easily replicable. We all hate killing darlings—darlings are darlings.
Then it’s really about investing in those partnerships, both in terms of working with the same partners over and over again, and sometimes building the sustainability of those partnerships from the start. Because, for example, we’ve started to work with a new partner, a heritage partner, and at one of our first meetings we said, “You know what? We’re actually really interested in developing a replicable model with you,” and they were like, “Oh, this is so great because so do we. We always work with artists for one-off and this is so time consuming. We would love to develop something that’s replicable with you.”
I think it’s about that, but also, the more you work with partners, the more they’ll start to talk about you behind your back, hopefully, in a good way. It really helps in having more people who would commission work like the one you’ve done before who will approach you. It’s building that word-of-mouth effort. But yes, generally, it’s challenging.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Even just knowing that, though, I think is important, knowing that it’s a constant push all the time, and it’s the same in the research space as well with the research funding. Because some of those things, especially with partnership relationships and all those things involved, it might take a year to put together the funding application with them, potentially a 13% chance of success. That is facilitated because the institution pay my wages, if that makes sense, but they don’t pay my partners for all of that prep work. So it is striking that balance, but it is … I think, yes, it’s worthwhile acknowledging that it is a constant uphill push, I think.
Polly Barker
Definitely. I’d add in that working with individuals to fund your work can be really rewarding, although it can be very time-consuming. But in my background in fundraising, I’ve worked with a lot of individuals, and this is where match funding can be absolutely crucial, because if you are putting in an application for £10,000 pounds, for example, but you could say we have five individuals who agree that what we’re doing is worthwhile, and they’re willing to provide a donation of £1,000 pounds each, you’ve got six people then who are already on board with what you’re doing. It’s safety in numbers, I suppose.
We’ve found that that is exceptionally useful, and often individuals are very willing to say, “Yes, you can put this towards your unrestricted costs. I’m happy for this to go towards paying for the insurance or the heating bill,” or the things that are not particularly exciting, maybe. But if they have faith in the organisation as a whole, then they’ll have trust that the organisation will meet its aims and objectives. Sometimes there are slightly more boring bills that need to be paid.
Marie Klimis
Bouncing back on that, I think something that’s really important, it’s plan your budgets to include those costs, because it’s very tempting to just think, “Oh, the commissioner is asking me how much is that going to cost when there is not a fixed amount,” and it’s very tempting to just count project costs. But your organisation is not going to run unless you pay your rent, unless you pay your insurance, unless you get your website’s maintenance. All those costs are your costs, and they are project costs, because there is no organisation if those costs are not met. I think it’s being, as an organisation, you come a long way in terms of understanding those costs and making sure that you ask for them. Sometimes you feel a bit bold about asking commissioner to pay for your rent, but you shouldn’t, just ask for the money, because these are your costs.
Natasha Stanton
Can I just jump in there? Just in terms of the commercialisation approach that we’re taking as well. I know that often when we talk about commercialisation, it sets hairs running a little bit. People feel quite uncomfortable about it as a term. But actually, on a really basic level, actually, if you just think of it as cost recovery, it costs you this much to update a document that provides really good guidelines, how to do X, Y and Z, that’s not a bad thing to pay for that. That’s okay. When we as UKRI talk about commercialisation, it’s not about financial profit, it’s about that scalable and sustainable model, and that’s the heart of what you’re saying, and so if you read that from us, please don’t panic. We’re trying to help build something sustainable outside of funding cycles.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
The other thing I was going to ask about actually is subsidy and tickets, just some clarity around, does all work that comes, all funding that comes from this space have free tickets? Can you charge if you’re doing these things? I think some people listening might not understand maybe the relationship between the funding that’s coming in and then potentially what audiences might pay.
Marie Klimis
I think it really depends. It can be both. I think what I personally love about having both commission funding or Art Council or other type of public funding is the fact that you can suddenly have projects that are much cheaper to come to or being completely free. That does wonders in terms of access because suddenly you can reach audiences who would not pay £30, £40, £50 theatre tickets. They can come for free, or they can pay a Fiver. For example, a lot of my solo work is in libraries, so it’s been working with a combination of commission funding and topped up without Art Council funding who are really excited to work in libraries because they’re all around the country, they’re free, they’re very diverse in terms of who’s coming. That public funding allows you to take the work where people already are, so this is something I find really exciting. But equally, it doesn’t mean that that work has to be free. Often, that public funding is also an opportunity for you to be more experimental, take more risks. For example, with Coney, one of our shows … I’m doing a bit of putting the show out there.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Promotion is absolutely acceptable.
Marie Klimis
We’re launching a really exciting show, which is 1884, next month. It’s an immersive game theatre show about colonial history and the lack of memorialization of colonial history. Because of the nature of … It’s an immersive show and it’s a game, so it’s got fairly small capacity. You’ve got 48 audience members per show, but it’s still a very complicated show with immersive set design and a lot of performers with very active audience participation. If we had to charge ticket prices, which is what costs us, it would be very expensive. But we do it at Shoreditch Town Hall, and tickets are £15, £20. We couldn’t do that if we didn’t have the Arts Council funding.
That doesn’t mean that your work has to be free, but that funding allows you to be able to do the work you want to do to reach the audience you want to reach while keeping it affordable, and also taking away the risks, the commercial risks. You do know that, for example, well, for the library projects, they were free, for the 1884, they ticketed, but you do know that we have a fixed income that goes into your funding bid, and you know that your costs are covered. You’re not afraid that you need to change your project so it meets your box office. You can be really true to what you want to make because it was funded for you to be true to exactly what you wanted to make and who it was for.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Which is valuable for audiences in the long run as well, because the more and more we get to innovate and experiment, the better and more exciting opportunities there’ll be for audiences. The value, again, comes in that slightly shifted way. In terms of … Then it has a certain impact as well, which is always challenging. Polly, how about for you? How do you feel about that space, and what does that do in terms of ticket prices for audiences?
Polly Barker
Well, yes, for us, we’re not looking to make a profit, and we’re wanting to get as many people through the door into our shows as possible, especially people that might not be accessing a lot of culture through the rest of their daily life. We keep our ticket prices as low as possible. But sometimes that is a conversation with commissioning partners so we can … We really want to make the biggest difference to the greatest number of people as we can, and especially for a show that’s aimed at children, we don’t want to price any families out of those experiences. That’s a conversation, but partners are usually very much on-board with doing that as long as the budget can balance.
We’re in quite an interesting place now. We’ve just moved to Wembley and we’re about to open a new venue. We’ll be doing shows for families there and welcoming different community groups into our space. We’re looking for ticketing partners at the moment. We’re actually going down the route of trying to talk with organisations, so corporate support. Potentially, if you’re doing another podcast in 12 months’ time, maybe I’ll be able to talk more about that process, and hopefully that will include quite a lot of ticket subsidy, especially for people that are local to the venue and local in the London Borough of Brent.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Because a lot of the work goes into schools as well. Do the schools have to find budget for that?
Polly Barker
Yes. We’ve always worked in such a way that we seek investment from the school because the projects we bring in, they normally evolve over a number of weeks if they include us bringing an immersive set into the school and performers. There’s quite a lot of organisational and infrastructure conversations that we have with the school in advance. It’s really important that they make a financial contribution as well because it helps with the overall buy-in of the project. But we’re finding more and more that teachers are saying it’s very hard for us to find any funding for arts and culture activity, much more so since COVID, and so we do now bring some of our projects for free where we find the funding elsewhere. But it’s usually a mixed picture.
With some of our biggest projects that might take three weeks within a school, the costs are maybe met around 15% to 20% by the school and the rest we fundraise to make happen. But more recently, with some schools in Brent, we’ve been able to say for the first time, “This is a project and we are able to offer it for free because of our funding,” and yes, schools are extremely receptive to that. But also, if they haven’t contributed, sometimes there might be a little bit less more engagement pre-project because they haven’t made that investment and see…
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Isn’t seen, I guess. That financial investment becomes a stake in the development of the work.
Polly Barker
Absolutely, especially for schools that may never have heard of Punchdrunk Enrichment’s work or immersive education as a sector. It’s not necessarily something that’s taught as part of PGCE. Maybe it will be in the future, fingers crossed. But there’s a lot of interest once they start to get to know the work. Also, teachers are often our best advocates. If a teacher from a local school is saying, “Oh, we did this project. It worked really well. Find out if you can get involved as well,” then that really helps with the investment too.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
I’m a governor at my little boy’s school and so I’m always advocating. Because you’re right, since COVID, there has been less and less and less provision, and part of that is because it’s not evaluated or captured as a subject in terms of SATs and those things. Again, there’s a really strategic issue that schools have to face. Of course, they have to meet those Ofsted in the governmental requirements, and so the funding has to be seen to go towards those things. It can be super challenging in that primary space to persuade.
Polly Barker
To persuade, yes, to convince. Sometimes with schools we work with, they might have a PTA or a group of parents that could help fundraise to make things happen, but that is usually only in the more affluent areas. In the schools where we often want to work, that’s not really an option for parents. It is just down to the school to say, “We will put aside a little bit of budget for this,” and it’s definitely getting a lot harder. That’s where, obviously, the third sector can help and where trusts and foundations can lend a hand. But also, since COVID, individual trusts that may have looked to fund education solely or arts and culture solely have recognized quite rightly that maybe there are other areas of society that they want to help within healthcare or social care. A lot of pots of funding have diversified, which unfortunately has not been that great for the education sector.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
No. I wonder, like I mentioned earlier with fairly hostile environment for the arts in the UK across the board, and maybe a shift in that soon will make a big difference, because there are lots of promises to reinvigorate arts within the curriculum and arts and education. Thank you so much. It’s been incredible. I’ve got one last ask of everyone here, which is for a tip or a trick around seeking funding or fundraising for the people listening. Just maybe one nugget, even if it’s something like you must do this or never, ever do this, just so people have got a takeaway.
Polly Barker
One thing I would say is just keep your close friends close. People that have funded you in the past are probably really interested. They’ve already invested and they’ll want to know what you’re doing and what challenges you might be facing. Then also, don’t be afraid to be bold. Last year, we partnered with the BBC and we ran an appeal on BBC Radio 4, and we asked Michael Rosen, the wonderful children’s author, if he would voice that for us, and he said yes, which was an amazing experience. We were able to reach a lot more new donors through that exposure, so yes, put yourself out there as much as possible.
Marie Klimis
I think mine would be probably think about what you are really excited to make and choose it carefully. I feel, as I said before, it’s very tempting to apply for lots of different pots of funding and just to tailor an application for brand new project for each application, and I’ve done that a lot, both as an individual producer, and it’s very time consuming, and often it’s not very effective because you don’t have a lot of time to develop those applications. While I feel like it’s easier to start to think about the work. What is it that I want to make, and who are the funders who match it?
The moment you have developed this project pitch very well, it’s much easier to apply that pitch to a lot of different funding contexts. You may tweak it, but you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. I think this is much easier. Sometimes just accept that, “No, let’s not apply for this. We have three days to apply, to come up with something new, and new partners to go with it, and that’s not going to work.”
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Exactly. Again, it comes back to authenticity in a way, and the organic…
Marie Klimis
Funders know when you’re not being true to them. They know when this is not what you do, and you’re just faking it. They know.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Yes. Natasha, do you have a piece of advice, especially around accessing research funding?
Natasha Stanton
Yes, just if I can be cheeky and have a couple of thoughts, I’ll try and be concise. Something from back from my old comms days, often I’m landing back on this idea of the output, the outtake, and the outcome. It’s a “so what” question, really. You’ve done X, Y and Z, so what? Just keep asking the “so what” question until you get to where you want to go. When you’re writing your application or pitching an idea, however it is that you’re putting your idea out there, just challenge yourself on the “so what” until it’s clear, because from a funder that is impact-driven, that’s really important to us. It needs to be clear. Output, outtake, outcome. What outcome are you looking for?
The second thing I’d say is that be prepared to play the long game, and especially at the moment with a lot of the things that are … Everything was new once upon a time and people wouldn’t have believed in X, Y and Z a long time ago. But actually, the work that you’re doing now, even if it feels like you’re coming up against a lot of resistance or a lot of bureaucracy or a lot of closed doors, actually, in the long run, doors will start opening, because there will be a critical mass of change.
As cheesy as it might sound, actually, in 10 years’ time, 15 years’ time, the difference that it can make for a new generation of researchers and innovators and artists, it’s really important to have that long-term focus. I would say be prepared to do that, but also then just take on board the impact that you are having by doing that. Even if you’re not seeing the fruits of your labour there and then, in the long run, it will come, so be patient with yourself.
Dr Joanna Bucknall
Thank you so much. Thank you all for being here. I know you are incredibly busy, and we really appreciate the insights that you’ve given us today, just giving people a huge amount to go away and to think about and start thinking about filling out. Thank you very much.
Natasha Stanton
Thank you.
Marie Klimis
Thank you so much.
Polly Barker
Thanks.
