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Most grassroots activity in the city seems to be supported by funding from Leeds City Council grant schemes, often matched with small grants from local trusts and foundations or small sponsorships. Although some were applying for larger funds there was a lack of evidence of success, most likely due to lack of skills and the capacity needed to generate larger bids.
Most activity is currently feasible due to positive relationships, with venues giving in-kind and other practical support. Although some venues are now more expensive and less able to offer space to minimally funded groups and individuals as they were in the past.
“Needs to be more support and guidance on funding – does the local authority provide funding? If so, what is it and how can one access it? Not made obvious to anyone.” Writer
“Leeds Inspired supplied small grant funding to Leeds Poetry Festival in 2022. Leeds Inspired funding can be more accessible due to its advice and guidance available to applicants.” Poppy Jennings, Leeds Poetry Festival
In our research we encountered many individuals and organisations who had tried to achieve funding for personal writing and project work. But many are not even applying. Nearly half of respondents to our writer’s survey stated that they have not tried to apply for funding for their work (48%), with 17% stating that they have tried but were unsuccessful. 9% stated that they have received a grant from a Trust or Foundation, 4% have received a DYCP grant from Arts Council, 4% have received a Project grant from Arts Council, and 2% have received a grant from Leeds City Council. 9% stated that they have received funding from another source (New Writing North, Leeds Art Fund, Society of Authors and AHRC funding), and 7% stated that they fund their work in other ways, such as through employment or own resources.
Arts Council England Investment in Literature and Writers in Leeds
Although not the only funder available to literature organisations, Arts Council England is a key funder for grassroots and smaller organisations through their National Lottery Funding schemes and via the Developing Your Creative Practice scheme that supports individuals. Arts Council England also provides major multi-year funding to National Portfolio Organisations (“NPO’s”).
Arts Council’s funding strategy is currently heavily influenced by the government’s levelling up agenda and has sought through the recent NPO round of funding and via other lottery funding to spread funding widely across the country with a special emphasis on both what they term and identify as “Priority Places” and “Levelling Up Places”. In the North there are 42 named places with five (Barnsley, Kirklees, East Riding, Rotherham and Selby) in Yorkshire.
With Kirklees the only named priority place in West Yorkshire you would perhaps expect to see less investment coming into Leeds. However, as we will see through comparative analysis of cities such as Sheffield, Manchester and Newcastle, none of which are priority places, Leeds has received noticeably less investment through this source than others.
As part of our research we looked at investment from Arts Council England that comes into Leeds to support literature. As part of this research, we did not look at funding for the wider area of West Yorkshire and as such may have not acknowledged projects funded from another local authority area that could be giving benefit to Leeds. For the research we looked at funding for National Portfolio Organisations, Lottery Project Funding and the popular and always oversubscribed Developing Your Creative Practice grants that are available for writers.
In the 2023-2026 period, 25 organisations were awarded NPO status in Leeds, with a total of £28,948,850 invested (equivalent to £35.65 per person). The main recipients of this funding were Opera North who received £10,677,102, and Northern Ballet who received £3,289,261. Comparatively, Birmingham received £26,534,514 (£23.18 per person), Sheffield received £3,668,653 (£6.59 per person), Manchester received £24,618,070 (£44.60 per person), and Newcastle received £8,929,115 (£29.74 per person).
Leeds is now the best funded city for NPOs outside of London. Of the 25 NPOs in Leeds, two were defined as Literature or Libraries and received a total of £5,916,368 (£7.29 per person). This is substantially more than other cities – however, most of the funds, £5,763,099 were allocated to BookTrust, which has just moved its office to Leeds and operates national programmes. Independent publisher Peepal Tree Press received £153,269. For comparison Bradford NPO funding to literature consisted of £1,055,520 to Culture Squared, £139,953 to Ilkley Lit Fest, and £236,778 to The Brontë Society.
As is evident, the majority of large-scale subsidised organisations in Leeds up until the arrival of BookTrust are not operating in the literature sphere and there is no infrastructure of smaller literature organisations in the city receiving core Arts Council support as in other cities. The scale of investment in literature in Leeds due to BookTrust’s relocation now changes this picture but does not bring the full value of that total investment to the citizens of Leeds, as BookTrust is a national organisation headquartered in Leeds.
We reviewed data from Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants (NLPGs) for the investment period 2020-2021, 2021-2022, and 2022-2023. Leeds is doing well in comparison to peer cities when it comes to investment from Arts Council England via Lottery Project Grants for all art forms, receiving £6,734,807 in this period. However, investment in literature from this source was only £140,808 over the three-year period, with no literature or library projects receiving NLPG funding in the 2020-2021 and 2022- 2023 period. In comparison, £645,869 was granted to literature projects in Birmingham during this period, £498,126 to literature projects in Sheffield, and £391,811 to literature projects in Manchester.
Our assessment is based on ACE’s own published information on successfully funded applications and as such this is an incomplete data set as it is impossible to know how many organisations and artists applied and were turned down for funding.
However, the unarguable lack of investment in literature projects aligns with our research into how confident individuals and organisations feel in applying and potentially points to a lack of applications. Our review is retrospective, and we understand that the picture for the current year may present different outcomes with grants supporting both the National Poetry Centre and the Contains Strong Language festival already confirmed for 2023/24.
*For the city population comparatives, population figures from the 2021 census have been used.
We also looked at the last three rounds of the Developing Your Creative Practice Awards that are Arts Council supported grants given directly to creative practitioners. These awards are very overbid and very competitive. Leeds had a very similar strike-rate to other comparative cities.
Many interviewees noted that sourcing information about funding was a concern that prevented them from applying, as was a lack of self-confidence in their ability to formulate a successful application, and the amount of labour required to submit a funding application. There appears to be a demand for both funding opportunities and communication about those opportunities, along with support and guidance on how to put together an application. This is further supported by the responses to the question on potential opportunities and support in the region: when asked about the possibility of advice and support to access funding for their work, 60% stated that this would make a big difference to them as a writer. 18% stated that they would be interested, 22% were moderately interested, and 0% were not at all interested.
An independent publisher from West Yorkshire noted the difficulty and labour of applying for Arts Council funding: “It takes so much time and emotional energy to write up bids. It’s a real struggle getting ACE funding – seems like money is not being spread across multiple orgs.”
Successful levers of regular funding in West Yorkshire include The SI Leeds Literary Prize, a biennial award for unpublished fiction by UK-based Black and Asian women, aged 18 and above.
A lack of experience in how to write bids and fundraise strategically and a lack of paid time to undertake this area of work underpins this lack of lottery project and other larger scale funding for literature coming into Leeds.
Localised funding from Leeds City Council which does not place barriers on applicants, and which keeps the threshold low and open will continue to be important to support literature, but it should also be used more as matched funding to lever wider investment from sources such as Arts Council England and potentially the new UK Shared Prosperity Funds.
The West Yorkshire Combined Authority support for arts, culture and tourism alongside skills and adult education funding should offer future opportunities for literature and other art forms, though a West Yorkshire approach in terms of the scope of benefit would need to be considered. The strong connections between literature sector partners across the North would support potential approaches.
It is clear that investment in the capacity building of individuals and organisations to improve their fundraising from not only Arts Council England, but other public and private funders would help to improve the resources coming into the area for literature.
It successfully levers support from sponsors and the National Lottery in a mixed funding model. The prize has working relationships with a range of northern literary organisations including New Writing North, Arvon, and the Ilkley Literature Festival