We’re thrilled to announce the release of the OPEN DOORS: The Real Cost of Artist-Led Spaces report. The report collates the data from our 2021 survey which explored barriers to sustainability in artist-led spaces. 

Created in collaboration with East Street Arts and the Guild programme, and presented as part of the Hive conference, you can now download the report for free from East Street Arts' website now.

Accessibility: audio recordings of report available.

​As part of our work as Strategic Producers for Marikiscrycrycry on their new show GONER, we are pleased to offer 2 mentoring bursaries to early career producers working in/with a significant interest in experimental dance and live art. 

There is a chronic lack of producers working in the sector, but particularly in these forms. We hope to be able to support 2 people to develop their practice through offering our time as a sound board, advice, skill-sharing and resources.

The Offer
-Mentoring from Ash and Laura at The Uncultured across 4 x 1 hour sessions, plus any in-between quick fire questions
-Creating a plan across the sessions to reach a goal, or learn about a specific area of producing
-Bursary of £350 to cover your time

Who
1. You must be a producer with at least one year of experience, and you should define yourself as Early Career. 

2. You can be based anywhere in England. Mentoring sessions will be held over zoom between March - May 2023 at times mutually agreed.

3. You will be working in experimental dance or live art already, or have a significant interest in working in this area in your future practice. 

4. Marikiscrycrycry and The Uncultured want to ensure this opportunity is accessible to Black producers who are currently underrepresented in this area of the sector. Therefore, one of these bursaries is held for a Black producer. On the short application form, you will be asked to self-identify if this applies to you.

5. If you don’t know who we are, please take a look at our website the-uncultured.com and check that you’d want to spend time with us!

How to apply
Please fill in this very short Google form to apply, so we can double check you meet the above application criteria. You will be asked to share a link to your website, to your CV or list some of the artists/projects you have worked on.

If you don’t already work in experimental dance or live art, you will be asked to include a short paragraph on why you want to move into this area and name a few artists whose work you are interested in.

Applicants who meet the above criteria will have a number assigned to their application which will be put into a number generator and randomly selected. Because of this random selection process we will be unable to offer feedback. 

When
Deadline for applications is 20th February 2023 at 5pm. Late submissions will not be entered. 

​2022 was less covid-y than the last few years we can remember but it was still pretty shit, so nothing really changes, which is reassuring at least. 

This year Laura moved to Toronto so has begrudgingly become a morning person in order to continue working with Ash, who has begrudgingly become an afternoon person in order to continue working with Laura. The long-distance work-wifery endures. 

In 2022 we worked with this bloody lovely bunch of people...in alphabetical order: Amy Pennington, Arts Council England, Brian Lobel, David Shearing, East Street Arts, Malik Nashad Sharpe and Xavier de Sousa.

We fundraised £464,843.00 for 28 individuals. We worked with 51 individuals and organisations through advisories, mentoring and consultancy.

We were really pleased to have been invited to teach and facilitate workshops with students and freelancers at Axis, People Dancing, Rose Bruford College, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Shoot Festival, Somerset House, Two Queens and University of East London. 

Here's one for the low pay fans - in 2022 we worked 462 unpaid hours - and they're just the ones we remembered to log. 
That's about 38.5 hours, or 5 and a half days a month. 
A week and a bit a month, gratis.

On that note, we hope that all the freelancers out there can afford to take a break over winter and that 2023 is a bit less Tory.

Ash + Laura xx

​Very hard to think of a catchy name for this one but we've created a free download resource that we hope will be helpful to anyone who is interested in understanding which National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) and Investment Principle Support Organisations (IPSOs) are in those strategic funding locations that we are all being encouraged to contact.

It's an Excel workbook containing the 2023-26 Arts Council England NPO + IPSO organisations, compiled by ACE area, Priority Place and Levelling Up.


HOW TO USE: To download for yourself so you can edit, re-filter, add notes, go to File > Make a Copy and save it somewhere useful.

Happy researching!

​Like the losers we are, we've made a financial planner for you to celebrate the New Financial Year! 🎆

It's based on the one we use to ensure that we can make enough money in a year to cover what it costs us to be in business (our overheads) and cover what it costs us to live (our "wage").

We would recommend opening it in Google Sheets then clicking File > Make a copy, in order to save it for yourselves so that you can edit it and use the full functionality. This includes percentages that will auto-calculate and figures that will auto-populate as you add things. 

​HOW TO USE IT:​
There are 2 tabs at the bottom of the workbook. The first is an annotated EXAMPLE, and the second is a BLANK VERSION for you to use. 

The first thing you'll see are the Target Annual Costs. You need to make these your own, and you can add lines for each of your overheads as required. 

Then, the Income box starts with a Description line. This is for your to describe different strands of your practice broken down into projects, clients or types.

Next there is a Target Income column. This is the target you are aiming to reach for each different category of income. We work this out based on the capacity we think we have for each different type.
>>For example, you might think "I charge £300 for a consultancy session on the use of K-pop in live art, and I reckon I will do about 5 sessions of that this year" Therefore 5x£300 = £1500 target income for this line.

​But, whatever you put here, it's a goal, and will be flexible - fill it in as you need and explore it for yourself. It should be a living document that you change throughout the year as more information becomes available to you. It can also help you see what areas you need to chase for more work.

Next is a Confirmed Income column, which we fill in when a job becomes confirmed or we receive a contract. The % Complete column next to this will auto-fill cleverly to tell you how much of your target income against that line has been found. As you add to it you can see the totals adding up across the year.

At the bottom the Still to Find box shows you how far under covering all your costs you are, based on the Confirmed Income you have. While it's a minus you still have jobs and money to find and confirm. If it's a positive number, then you can add more to some of your Target Annual Costs, such as your Target wage, you lucky little sausage!

We're doing more and more advisories/consultancies on how freelancers can think more strategically to make projections for the period or year ahead so they feel some sense of control and stability. This Financial Planner can be a useful tool for plotting out what you need, where in your career it is coming from and where the shortfalls are.

Let us know if you find it helpful!

[Length: 2 mins]

TLDR, direct link to templates here

We didn't plan to make a new ACE Under £30k template because we thought ACE had made one that was fit for purpose...but then we used it and realised it wasn't.

So we've now got a whole page dedicated to ACE templates in our resources section. This includes a DYCP template, a DYCP report template and an Under £30k NLPG template, plus the old under £15k report for while it might still be useful. 

The Under £30k template links to a folder in which there is a full template, and also a workbook for all the numerical data needed in the application. It's a whopper at 28 pages before you've even input any information, so there is also a folder with bite size chunks of the application in it in case this makes it easier to navigate.

In the template we would recommend opening it in google docs then clicking File > Make a copy, in order to save it for yourselves so that you can edit it and use the full functionality. This includes an outline on the left hand side of the document if you click on Show Document Outline which makes it easier to navigate the document. 

We really hope this is useful and is more accessible than the one that ACE have released. Our previous Under/Over £15k templates were downloaded thousands of times and we had a lot of requests from folks to make a new one. It's taken hours of unpaid time* to make, but that doesn't mean it's perfect or that it makes the inaccessible process any easier.

Please do share this with anyone that might find it useful. 
Please do tell us if it actually is useful.
And if you fancy, please do tell ACE how useful you think it is. 

Please tag us @_TheUncultured_ if you share on socials.

*UPDATE: On sharing this template publicly, we were kindly offered money from some NPOs to cover the time it took us to make this resource. Big thanks to Derby Theatre (shout out to Sarah for offering in public first), Theatre Bristol, Cambridge Junction and Prime Theatre for their contributions. 

​2021 was another tumultuous year for most, but we were fortunate enough to continue to have each other and our lovely networks, which we’re pretty pleased with. We got supercolds, spent more time on zoom than our new year's resolutions would have been happy with, Laura had a 3 month burnout period and Ash moved to Brighton. We feel alright as of December 15th, thanks for asking. 

Despite the stop-start nature of life mid-Covid, we fundraised £513,198 for independent artists, an average grant of £14,255.50.

We also produced some fantastic work this year:
Stomach Full - Rachael Young
The Rising Sun R+D - David Shearing
Out of the Frame R+D - Connor Bowmott + Regan Mott
24 Italian Songs & Arias + Voices - Brian Lobel
BINGE - Brian Lobel
Medusa Reclusa R+D - Lauren John Joseph
He’s Dead - Marikiscrycrycry
Prada in the Rain R+D - Marikiscrycrycry
REGNANT - Xavier de Sousa

We gave direct support to 32 creatives through advisories, mentoring and consultancy. This has enabled us to meet some brilliant folks all over the country, to help with their strategic planning, business planning, fundraising and sustainable development. 

As part of our ACE-funded Producing for the End of the World we delivered free Arts Council Project Grants and DYCP workshops to over 70 individuals. We’ll be doing more on this project in 2022. 

We launched OPEN DOORS: The Real Cost of Artist-Led Spaces with East Street Arts, the beginning of a campaign we’ll be doing a lot more work on in 2022. 

We taught brilliant future artists at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Rose Bruford College, London Studio Centre and Middlesex University. This ranged from delivering an entire Festival module to delivering one-off lecturing on fundraising, producing and collaborative practice. 

We delivered further facilitation with professionals, early-career practitioners and young people with East Sussex Arts Partnership, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Theatre Bristol, Producer Gathering and The Committee at The Yard. Through these we explored money, value and sustainability. 

We were fortunate enough to work with Eve Veglio-Hüner during her LSC placement and as Assistant Producer following that.

23% of the work we did in 2021 was unpaid. As freelancers, having a quarter of our time as unpaid is unsustainable and we will continue to challenge the culture of this and explore ways for this time to be compensated for ourselves and others. 

2021 has basically been 2020 v2 for everyone and we hope that you got through it as unscathed as possible. We’re tired, you’re tired. Let’s have a bloody break and then see what 2022 has to offer.

Ash + Laura x

We're very pleased to be working with powerhouses Malik Nashad Sharpe and Xavier de Sousa on their upcoming performances in London and Manchester. Find out more below and hopefully see you there!

REGNANT - Xavier de Sousa
HOME Manchester
​27 November, 3-9pm
£20 whole show // £6 per hour slot // concessions available, book here

REGNANT is a new theatre performance, a dinner party with the guests diving into how we interact with each other within the context of migration and belonging. It is composed live with you, our guests, and patrons. Almost all the materials present on stage, from the pottery to the decoration and the food, have been created by hand for you.

As your hosts, we invite you to join us at the dinner table, get merry, make friends and explore structures of power within local communities and how they influence how we shape our collective future.

In REGNANT, Xavier expands the dinner-party setting of his previous show, POST, to think more broadly about collectivity, community and privilege within the performance space and in the development of the narrative itself. This performance will include a variety of local guests and co-performers, who will be turning up across the duration of the piece.

​UPDATED on 17th Nov: we've removed our template as ACE finally have their own one now!! Download here.

---
​This might be useful if you are planning to apply as soon as the new applications open on 22nd November, or if you just want to see how different the application looks.

Just a note on dates: any under £15k apps must be submitted by 19th November 2021, otherwise it will be an under £30k app from 22nd November so plan wisely!

​READ THIS NOTE BEFORE USING: 
This template is created based on the guidance released from ACE on 2nd November 2021 and is only a makeshift version of a template to help understand what the application in Grantium *might* look like – as it hasn’t opened yet I can’t guarantee that it will be formatted exactly as below but hopefully this is close and can help us to get our heads around the many, many changes!

We'll add an updated template when we can access the form in Grantium, so more soon!

We're super excited to announce that Brian Lobel's beautiful project 24 Italian Songs and Arias has been reimagined as a digital archive of 24 interpretations of those 24 songs. It has been created with support from Gweneth Ann Rand and Allyson Devenish who are also part of the show, and has been commissioned and made possible by University Musical Society (UMS) at the University of Michigan.

Taking the famous book as a starting point, 24 international singers have been invited to offer their interpretations and share their stories on their journey to finding their voice. Brian and friends also ask you to submit your own versions, because we really want to hear what you've got, and it's polite to share!

www.24italiansongs.org