Funding in support of excellence

Merging our two charities – Jerwood Foundation and Jerwood Arts – into a single foundation at the start of last year enabled us to rethink our role as a funder, ensuring we remain true to our founding principles and fit for purpose in the current context of UK arts funding.

Jerwood Foundation was established in 1977 by Alan Grieve on behalf of businessman and philanthropist John Jerwood. The main beneficiaries were outstanding early-career UK-based arts practitioners.

During his tenure as chairman, Grieve embodied an entrepreneurial spirit and encouraged imaginative and responsive funding. Our recent merger has allowed us to return to this original ethos.

It also enabled us to streamline our organisations and ways of working to ensure not only more transparency in how we fund, but also importantly that more funding can be directed to outstanding arts practitioners. It has proved timely when so many arts organisations are facing significant financial pressures.

Open funding rounds

We now run open funding rounds for for project grants, which are published on our website and social media channels. We have deliberately limited application guidelines to encourage as many different organisations as possible to apply for a wide range of projects.

Alongside simplifying the application process, we have reconsidered the reporting requirements for grant recipients. As a trustee and executive director, I am conscious of not exposing the foundation to risk. So before any grant is awarded, we take time to understand an organisation, its proposed project and its financial situation.

Although we do ask for an end-of-project report – so the board and team can deepen their understanding of projects and organisations – we do not hold back a proportion of the grant to incentivise grantees.

Having done research, we believe we should trust the organisations we fund, and pay the grant in full for to enable them to budget and run their projects. And every successful applicant is assigned a grants manager and a trustee contact to facilitate good communication between the foundation and funded organisations.

Small staff team

In keeping with our mission to direct the maximum possible funding to organisations, we have only a small staff team. Last year, having just two members of staff to achieve all our work – including managing the Jerwood Collection – was ambitious. So we have increased our permanent staff and now have a team of four: two grants managers working with me as well as the Jerwood Collection manager.

Alongside, we have a dedicated and engaged board, led by Rupert Tyler, made up of trustees from the two former bodies, bringing the best thinking of both organisations to our new entity.

During 2024, the newly-merged foundation held three open funding rounds, processed 815 applications and awarded grants worth over £2 million. Importantly, of the 35 successful organisations, 22 had not previously been funded by Jerwood.

These included the Almeida Theatre, which was awarded a two-year £50,000 grant to launch Almeida Makers, an artist development programme supporting eight exceptional early- and mid-career directors and designers each year; and Far From the Norm, which was awarded £20,000 to support NORMGROUND, a dedicated artistic learning and development programme for performers from Hip-Hop and other intersecting style backgrounds.

Continues…

Cat for Free, Almeida Theatre

Developing partnerships

In the first year we also developed existing partnerships – one with Art Fund – to launch Jerwood Art Fund Commissions. This initiative enables UK museums and galleries to commission early-to-mid-career artists, working across a range of artistic media and making practices, to produce innovative work and further their artistic development at a pivotal stage in their careers.

Long-standing relationships remain important to us. Some project grants were awarded to organisations that are home to Jerwood Capital Projects.

These included Birmingham Royal Ballet, where the Jerwood Centre for the Prevention and Treatment of Dance Injuries is based, which was awarded a two-year grant of £100,000 to support BRB2, a talent development programme, established by the artistic director, Carlos Acosta.

Fitting the sector’s needs

Our funding process is not perfect. Making sure our small team is challenged but not overwhelmed inevitably means human resources are limited. But we continue to review our funding and ways of working so that what we do remains straightforward, understandable and relevant – both internally and externally.

I think Jerwood Foundation should be an enabler; our funding must fit the sector’s needs and ambitions. To do this, we have to listen and understand organisations and their changing needs. We have to be willing to be flexible, to adapt and change. Being entrepreneurial and fleet footed was in our founding DNA; it means we can continue to support excellence and emerging talent in the arts in the UK.