MAYK's Cultural Recovery Grant
Alongside many other colleagues and friends across the country, we’ve spent much of the past few months making the case for the importance of culture in people’s lives. The government are taking steps to recognise this by awarding £1.5bn through the Cultural Recovery Fund.
MAYK received a grant of £96,876 that will support our work between now and the end of March 2021. This is a huge relief for us and will allow us to kick-start our programme next year.
So often grants like this are shrouded in mystery, so we thought you might like to hear what we’re going to do with the money…
£15,000 is going towards commissioning and developing new work with independent artists (more about this very soon), with an additional £8,000 going towards production/presentation online and live
Employ four freelancers to support the delivery of our projects
Boost the support to our Change MAYKERS – a group of inspiring young artists who we will be supporting to create new kinds of spaces for the creation and presentation of relevant and meaningful creative encounters. This is an artist-led long term project and we can be expecting to hear more from them through 2021 and beyond
Support the work we’re already doing with independent artists on developing new work that will begin to appear in Bristol and beyond from early 2021
Cover some overheads that we hadn’t anticipated arising during the crisis
Pay some clever brains to work with us on our strategic fundraising, development and communications, readying us for a public programme from early 2021 onwards
Establish a small pot of reserves. We've never had reserves before, which has made us very vulnerable. This pot will mean we have a bit of a buffer should there be any more interruption to our work caused by Coronavirus
Whilst we are very thankful for the support offered to MAYK through the Cultural Recovery Fund, we know that there are hundreds of individual artists and freelancers who still desperately need support, and who need to be central to our industry’s recovery. Please keep lobbying your MP for additional support for self-employed people. You can find out more about how to take action on the Freelancers Make Theatre Work website.