Director’s Blog – Lisa Charlotte Davis
But I really want to celebrate that we managed to get a proposal into the Youth Endowment Fund for our A is for Amy programme of learning around teenage relationship abuse.
Completely honestly, when the call came out, we looked at it and thought, “do we actually have capacity to draft a proposal requiring that level of detail whilst also”…
😮💨 finishing up an Arts Council England proposal for our Don’t Look Away project
😮💨 preparing and delivering new training offers around our Weaving Stories animation (peer sexual abuse) and Navigating Vulnerability artwork (workforce wellbeing)
😮💨 getting our A is for Amy and Sometimes it Hurts educator toolkits ready for our fab designer Megan Watson to whip into shape ready to hand over to our partner educators in the Autumn as part of our Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded project
The answer was partly, “no not really” but also “we can’t not do it!”
There’s always a judgement call with opportunities as to how closely they fit the work you are doing. Crow-barring is definitely to be avoided. Burnout is an entirely relevant consideration.
But with the focus being around testing a violence against women and girls-oriented prevention programme in secondary schools, we just couldn’t not throw A is for Amy into the mix, as it would create an incredible opportunity to take our film and associated learning programme further and positively impact more young people’s understanding of (un)healthy relationships.
And so we went for it! Huge amount of work. Fabulous pool of SIX North East-based partner organisations brought into the mix to support our proposal and delivery, should we be lucky enough to be awarded. And it’s in!!!
Obviously we have no idea whether or not we will be successful with this proposal and the Youth Endowment Fund will undoubtedly get loads of great applications from other organisations also doing valuable work.
I just think it’s really important to share this side of things as well as the “woo success 🥳” scenario. There’s so much work that happens in the voluntary sector irrespective of whether you win the funds you have applied for. And sometimes it feels important to celebrate all of that behind-the-scenes work.
