Supporting communities to access high quality arts activities

About The North East Fund for the Arts

The North East Fund for the Arts fund seeks to enable community groups to access professional, high quality arts activities, on their own terms. Projects could therefore engage a community in arts activity for the first time, develop their engagement, or inspire participants to seek further opportunities in the arts. All art forms are invited.

A community for the purpose of grant-making is a group of people who will benefit as a result of the grant. They could be a geographical community or have a shared background, identity or interest.

Applications are invited from both community organisations and arts organisations. The strongest projects will demonstrate partnerships and wider community involvement. Priority will be given to applications that demonstrate longer term impact, as such one-off or stand-alone events are unlikely to be successful. Those that show there is an intention to build on the initial work are likely to be deemed a higher priority.

These grants are not available to freelance artists, although we encourage organisations to reference them where applicable.

This fund is always hugely oversubscribed. To help organisations decide about allocating resources to making an application; in 25/26 the fund received 19 applications with funding available for three projects. Fundable projects are sometimes picked up by other funds at the Community Foundation.

Decisions are made by a panel made up of an independent group of sector specialists, donors and artists.

To make an application, please click here