Strategic funding partnerships: Imagining different futures

Community arts and social change

Patrick Fox (PF): As a community arts organisation, we’ve always seen our work as providing opportunities to imagine the world differently. In a moment of deep cultural crisis in which people feel disconnected and unheard, the unique position of community development and arts methodologies to ‘stay with the trouble’* to unlock something together feels more vital than ever. 

Lisa Nandy’s Jennie Lee lecture in February rightly underscored the power of creative expression in building trust, fostering understanding and strengthening a sense of belonging. I welcome her reminder that the arts are not a luxury but a fundamental force in shaping a more cohesive future.

In 10+ years of Heart of Glass we’ve witnessed an overwhelming appetite for space, conversation and creative intervention – against the backdrop of increasingly limited (and often hostile) opportunities for genuine public dialogue. Encountering your work at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), I felt reassured that spaces of imagination were being recognised and prioritised by others across the social, political and environmental spectrum.

Our recent programme – Speculative Futures – has seen our work develop in lots of different spaces and contexts. Projects like What Does He Need? exploring masculinity, or our place-based programmes across St Helens and Knowsley exploring community ownership and experimentation create vital opportunities for a range of lived experiences to interact with and challenge the forces that shape our experience of contemporary society. 

My entry into the arts was through community-based projects in North Dublin, one of Europe’s largest regeneration projects at the time. It was my first experience of the power of community-based arts as a space of social transformation and agency. It led me to understand I had a place and space through which to imagine the world anew. Could you share some of the motivations behind your Emerging Futures programme?

Emerging futures and collective imagination

Sophia Parker (SP): JRF launched the Emerging Futures programme with the recognition that we are in a poly-crisis – a convergence of crises where traditional solutions, particularly those addressing poverty, may no longer be effective. This is especially true of the ecological crisis, which demands fundamental shifts rather than incremental changes.

Our approach has been inspired by systemic change models, which highlight the decline of dominant systems and the emergence of new ones – often marginalised because they challenge mainstream values. Over the past year, we made the strategic decision to support 28 organisations building alternative, post-capitalist futures, centring regenerative practice, liberation, solidarity and joy.

Operating across culture, justice, healing, economics and ecology, they are carving out innovative spaces that move beyond the constraints of late-stage industrial capitalism and pioneering new ways of thinking and working.

Dangers of instrumentalisation

PF: This approach really resonates with us and the artists and communities we work with. In the arts, the tendency has been to prescribe value – be that ideas of artistic excellence or social impact. There is danger in co-opting artists into being pseudo social workers and in enforcing narrow social outputs.

What we are interested in is in creating a framework where art, artists and communities can be in dialogue with civic life to question and reimagine the world we share and create tomorrow together.

I’m nervous of the increased focus on what I call slogan approaches – five easy steps to community engagement, toolkits for collaboration or consultation masked as co-creation. The danger is that they don’t allow for genuine experimentation or for the potential for real transformation.

For example, our long term work with Youngsook Choi, In Every Bite of the Emperor is experimental and evolves with its participants. It unites lived experiences from Malaysia, South Korea, the UK and Vietnam, exploring how collective grieving, storytelling and ritual help recover lost connections and inspire new possibilities. We don’t start with a desired outcome.

Continues…

In Every Bite of The Emperor, Malaysia research trip. Photo: Youngsook Choi

Paradigm shifts

SP: I think the critical question is what role a funder could play in supporting these emerging ecosystems. We have experimented with different approaches and are moving into a new phase with more substantial financial commitments.

Our funding is crucial, but the real challenge lies in encouraging more investment from other funders. Currently, UK philanthropy overwhelmingly focuses on sticking plaster efforts, addressing the worst effects of systemic crises rather than funding long-term alternatives.

While this work is necessary, the imbalance is stark. An estimated 98% of philanthropic funding goes toward short-term relief, with less than 2% supporting the development of new paradigms. It’s such an urgent moment and we must shift more resources toward shielding and strengthening emerging futures, ensuring they have the space to take root and thrive.

Dialogues / role of artists

PF: It’s a challenge we are always reflecting on within community arts practice – how do we shift thinking around the role of art and culture in a functioning civil society and how do we create spaces for voices that perhaps haven’t been valued in the dominant system?

Being based in Knowsley, which experienced significant unrest during last summer’s riots, has demonstrated that there is a huge opportunity for the arts to create alternative spaces and ways to be in dialogue with each other. 

Our recent conference was called When Words Fail in recognition of the challenge to connect and communicate as different crises impact our lives. It revealed many different types of knowledge and experiences that may have been unvalued, but also the need for new approaches to new challenges.

Resourcing alternative futures

It’s clear to us both that resourcing and supporting those actively shaping alternative futures is essential.

• Increase funding and support – Investing in those actively building alternative futures is crucial. Read more on resourcing radical hope here.
• Rethink funding and evaluation models – Long-term investment and new approaches to evaluation are needed to truly support and sustain innovative work. Join the conversation on collective imagination here.
• Embrace multiplicity – Just as a thriving garden depends on diverse ecosystems, an emergent future requires a range of voices, perspectives, and approaches.

The challenge now is not just imagining different futures but actively creating the conditions for them to take root and flourish.

* In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations in ‘Staying with the Trouble’.