Youth Music has announced a new Emergency Fund to offer additional support to music-making organisations affected by coronavirus.
Final deadline for applications: 15 May 2020
Open Until:
Posted: 10/03/2022
Through this fund well aim to prioritise the people and organisations in the most immediate need, and to make quick decisions and payments. Grants of up to £10,000 are available, and organisations do not need to have held a Youth Music grant to be eligible to apply.
This fund is the first phase of our response. There will be weekly application deadlines for an initial six-week period. The first application deadline was 5pm on Thursday 9 April. The online application form is now open – apply through our online grants portal. The application guidance notes contain information on all the questions which will be asked in the online form.
The Emergency Fund is designed to support organisations facing the following challenges:
- Cashflow organisations are seeing threats to their income, in particular from charged-for services and from contracts. This has significant implications for honouring employment and freelance contracts and core ongoing costs. At the time of writing there is still a lack of clarity about eligibility of government support measures and when any funding might be released.
- Maintaining services there are/will be challenges in continuing to deliver core services through staff or volunteer absence, social distancing measures, increased childcare responsibilities, venues being closed etc.
- Adapting services delivering services in new ways, which can be more expensive, have high set-up costs (e.g. IT infrastructure, buying tech or instruments for tutors and young people) or require new policies or expertise.
- Children and young people the impact of the situation on children and young peoples mental and physical health; the negative implications for some vulnerable children of being out of school; keeping in contact now that the normal music sessions have ceased; engaging young people in new forms of learning; reaching children beyond digital access (e.g. disabled young people; those who dont have devices or an internet connection).
We expect that this will be a highly competitive fund. When we make decisions, we will aim to award grants based on need. We know that we wont be able to help everyone, and well have some difficult decisions to make: well be doing our best to prioritise those people and organisations most in need, and our hope is to support as many organisations around the country as we can.
Please direct all questions to grants@youthmusic.org.uk in the first instance. If you cant access email, then telephone 020 7902 1060.
A list of Frequently Asked Questions can be found on the Youth Music website