Hey, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the Q&A webinar for our Youth-Led Creativity Learning Partner. We're really pleased so many of you can make it. We weren't sure how many people would be coming to this is the first time we've done a Q&A webinar for one of our tenders. We're trying to be more transparent and equitable in our processes, so we're trying it out. So do bear with us, and obviously do give us feedback afterwards what you did and didn't find helpful.
My name is Laura Lines. I'm a funding manager under A Fairer Future aim, and I lead on our Youth Led Creativity fund. I'm here with my colleague Gina and two of our Involving Young People Collective consultants, Aaliyah and Sam, who will introduce themselves shortly. We also have in the background, Francesca, Floree and Luna, who are doing things with the tech, and also will be helping with the Q&A
For accessibility, we're asking all our speakers to give a description of of themselves and where they are. So for me, I'm a white woman. I've got brown curly hair, brown eyes. I'm wearing a purple jumper and I've got a gold necklace on. I'm sat at my desk in my lounge, and my background is blurred.
I've got a few housekeeping bits to run through before we get into it. Live captioning is available. You'll be able to see a link in the chat if you'd like the live captions outside in a separate window, or you can click on the closed caption button at the bottom this screen to see them within zoom. We'll be using the Q&A facility so you can post your questions there. You can also use the thumbs up icon to upvote questions other participants have have raised, and we will prioritise upvoted questions. So do feel free to do that. We'll try and get through everything. It depends on how many questions and the length of our responses. Anything we can't answer, we will follow up with in terms of the transcript and anything we can't answer, then we'll put full answers in that transcript and also on our FAQs and our website, where you may already find the answer to your question.
So please don't worry if you miss anything. The recording of the webinar, the transcript and all the additional questions that will be answered will all be available on our website next week.
So just to outline the purpose of this session, and I guess the plan for it, we'll be speaking for about 20 minutes, and then we'll go to your questions. So Aaliyah and Sam will talk to you about the programme, the funded organisations, and what we're looking for in a Learning Partner. Gina will talk about the practicalities of applying, and then we'll come to the questions.
So just a little bit about Esmée before I hand over. We're an independent funder. On the slide there, you'll see our mission statement. We have three strategic aims. So Our Natural World, which is our environmental priorities, A Fairer Future, which covers arts and creativity making change, children and people's rights, and our three justice areas, and thenCreative, Confident Communities, which is our place based work. So the Youth Led Creativity fund sits within A Fairer Future. We'll tell you more about the Involving Young PeopleCollective just shortly. So I'll hand over to the rest of the panelists to introduce themselves. So if I come to you first, Gina,
Hi. Good to see so many people on this course the first time we've done this. So it's interesting. I'm Gina Crane. I'm Director of Communications and Learning at Esmée, and manage lots, quite a few different learning partner relationships. This is the first time we've done a tendering process like this. So I'm really interested to hear your questions. I'm a middle aged white woman. I'm sitting at my home in Peterborough and wearing a very brightly colored dress to combat the gray day outside. I'm going to pass over to Sam.
Hello. I'm Sam Purkis. I'm one of the Youth-Led Creativity leads. I'm also a working artist and a product of outreach. I'm a young white bloke wearing a green hat, got some stubble, and I'm wearing a stripey top.
Just quickly to introduce you to the Collective. We are the Involving Young People Collective. We often go by IYPC, and we work with Esmée, and we're a group of young people that are sort of essentially, we come from lots of different expertise and experiences, but we're interested in systems change and change making. And we work with Esmée to sort of design and test ways to make funding more equitable and ways to involve young people more. And I'll pass to Aaliyah.
I am Aaliyah. I am a Black woman in her mid 20s. I am wearing a lovely bright brown, orange turtle neck. I've got corn rows with beads, so you'll probably be hearing that click clacking in the background as well. And yeah, I am a diversity, equity, and inclusion lead on the IYPC, which is the involving young people collective. And I am kind of, I know that they're going to be typing in, so we'll just get into the mentee.
So, today we have something fun to do. We are going to ask you a question, what does creativity mean to you? It is just a quick way for us to see what you think creativity is. So you see that there is a QR code. We would like you to scan the QR code. If not, there is also the code that you can use. So it's menti.com up there, and then the code is up there, and you can just type, type it in. And there's a lot of words coming in. Some people are saying joy, which is really important to us. Some people are saying, liberation, expressionism, freedom, change. We're seeing a lot of expressionism. And yeah, we would just like you to participate. If you don't, it's fine, but it's great to see like what you are thinking as well.
I'm seeing a few self-expression, bold imagination, accessible, heavy on the accessible, lifeline, would love to know what that means, human, that is so true and yeah, don't know if I should continue. Innovation. And yeah, lovely play joy. And under note of that, we can go on to what the youth led creativity programme is.
Thank you. Yeah, the youth led creativity programme wants to build on young people's power to make change and use creativity to enhance their lives, develop their careers and influence the world around them. We're interested, you know, there's a lot of great work being done for young people in this space, but we want to platform and see more work done by young people in this space, and look at how young people can really use their voice to shape their future. We funded 10 organisations for a total of 1.1 million pounds, which will be over three years, and we will have a learning programme that will run alongside the funding, and it will enable peer support and that real cohort feeling, so people can share their practice and their learning and learn from each other.
All of our cohort, they had a real passion for celebrating and platforming their young people and demonstrated the joy and the care that they give to their young people, which was really important to us. And they also had a desire to share their practice with each other, to learn and grow. And something I think really made our cohort stand out to us, the members of it, is that they were very honest and transparent in their meetings, in, you know, the areas that they could still improve on. And you know, part of the first step to solving a problem is diagnosing it, and then they also have that sense of care and fun.
Over to you.
Thank you. Okay, so we are just going to go through some of our learning programme's goals.
Number one is to support the funded organisation to develop and share their models of practice.
Number two is to enable their peer support and learning in between the funded organisations and with the young people that they work with
Three is to inform Esmée's future support in youth led creativity.
And four is to share learning from the programme with the wider arts and youth sector.
The key things that we would love to highlight is just that co-design, inclusivity and accessibility of it all in evaluation and creativity. We would also like to say what the organisations would want from the learning programme. So we spoke to those organisations that we fund, and the key things that they have said to us is that they would like the peer and reciprocal learning. So it's like a two way learning system. They want to bring their expertise but also learn from the other organisations, to build a network. We believe in consistency here at Esmée and in the IYPC, and we would like us to have a network that we can keep on going back to and not just be ended with the funding or ended with being a learning partner, evaluation support, so that It can be like lengthy evaluate and to keep on documenting. But the support with evaluation is really key, especially because we have people with different level of maybe neuro diverse, and may need that extra help in that organisation of evaluating and then the lastly, but not least, being able to bring alternative structures and approaches, and that's where the innovation comes from. We'd like you to see from other perspectives and other ways, and not just the traditional route of doing things they are interested in, the non-hierarchical structures of both between the organisations and with the learning partnership.
Thank you so much, and thanks to everyone attending for sharing your creativity ideas. Also great to see them all like coming up in real time. So what are we looking for in a tender document or a video application? We are going to involve our young consultants in assessing these and we're trying to learn from our experiences in the application process for the grants. And really think about trying to not ask too much from you, because we know we've got to read it all. We've got to engage with it, and we want to make the decisions. So we're just asking for a maximum of three pages, A4 for a regular the kind of main bit of the tender, or you can do this as a five minute video, or however long it would take you to say three pages worth. So we did receive some video applications for the first time round. They worked really well, so we're really happy to receive it in that format as well. You can also give additional information so a potential budget, links to your CVs or LinkedIn pages, contact details of two referees and a couple of links to some relevant work. And that's in addition, they don't have to be in your three pages. That's fine.
We're not expecting you to give us a detailed plan for this work. This is a co-design project. We don't know exactly what it's going to look like, so we've sort of indicated some percentages of what we would like you to concentrate on in your tender and we want you to spend most of your time telling us why you are well placed to deliver the work based on the criteria. The majority of what you send in should be telling us about that, because that's how we're going to make our decision, we want a little bit on how you'd approach the first year of running the learning programme, maybe some ideas, just a way of working,
The closing date is the end of the day on the 18th of November, and we will be really strict about that. So please bear that in mind, we've had a few different invitations to tender lately, and we've got so many bids, we've just had to use the deadline as an absolute hard deadline. We're not going to consider anything after that. We really hope you can submit all your questions today. This is where we want to answer all the questions, rather than having follow up questions later. Obviously, if you do have some, you can share them, but we will add them to the summary of this webinar so that everyone can benefit from the answers to those questions too.
The questions are starting to trickle in. Don't be shy, do pop them in here. I'm going to kick off with a question that we had that was submitted beforehand, which is around conflict of interests. And I might come to you Gina on this first one.
We're interested in applying to the Youth-Led Creativity Learning Partner tender. However, we also are finalising the expression of interest of funding would apply to the tender have an impact on our funding application.
This is something we do get questions around. We quite often work with people for learning roles, consultancy roles, who are either funded by Esmée or have connections to work that we funded in the sectors that we're in. That's usually a benefit and usually something that we're looking for. It would be probably quite hard for us to appoint someone that we had never worked with or never had any kind of relationship with in the past. However, we do think it's really important to think about conflicts of interest, confidentiality, both in terms of our own role and the organisations'. I think the only real hard line we would have is that we want everyone in the learning programme, so all the organisations we're funding just need to be there as participants, so they're the only people I think we can't back to do this. But however, if you do have an existing grant from Esmée for something else, that's not a reason for us not to appoint you for this role. But we would have to think about, are there any areas where that might be tricky, and I can think of the most, the only real tricky one would be around shaping the future of the funding. So obviously, if that were to benefit you as an organisation or not, we'd just need to have a conversation about how you'd manage that. That doesn't mean we would use that as a criteria for assessment at this point, but it might be, if we interviewed you, we might ask about it there. I think that's everything on that one, Laura.
Thank you. And for the next one, I think I'll come to Sam or Aaliyah first. Can you please provide more information on models of practice under the goals of the programme? I think this is where we're talking about what the organisations want in terms of helping develop and share their own models of practice. Maybe you could just give a few examples of what the models of practice were within the cohort. If Sam or Aaliyah could come in on that.
All the cohort work differently, but they're a few shared models of practice as a lot of our cohorts are very big on co-design. Obviously, they've got their own definitions and ways of co-designing with their young people and co-producing. We have a organisation that works with young people from care experience background. So there is a lot around care and how to set them up, not only through a performance opportunity, but also learning how to work with money and finances and public speaking.
I think the role of the learning partner would be to work with them on how they articulate their own models of practice and being able to share them with the rest of the cohort. And, you know, learn and improve on them.
Great. Thank you. Aaliyah, did you have anything else you wanted to add on that?
No, I feel like Sam summed it up.
On some of the ones I was looking at there is quite a spectrum, isn't there?I think some of the organisations are, like through and through, young people throughout. Others are kind of want to move more young people onto their border, into the governance models and some are more traditional and have limitations around that. So I feel like there is quite a big spectrum. I think the learning artner and the cohort itself will be really critical in supporting people to do that, or think about different ways if you can't, or if your young people don't want to be on the board, like, how actually can you value and bring in their input throughout the different processes. I think there's quite a broad spectrum within the cohort of those models of practices.
Moving on to the next one. Does the learning partner need to be based in the UK. Or can they be based outside of the UK? Gina, do you want to come inon that?
Yeah, there's quite a few questions about this. It's not something we have a hard and fast rule about so for instance, there's someone asking about that and they're based in Scotland. There's someone based definitely outside the UK, working more in the Global South. I would say we don't know exactly what the meeting structure will be like for this group, but there, I think we would expect some of it to be in person. So we wouldn't expect all of it, definitely not. And there will be regular online meetings. They're more accessible, cheaper, it's easier, less cost on time, but we would expect some in person meetings. We're a funder who has a commitment to our natural world and the environment. I think if you were based a really long way away and had to fly here for those meetings that would start, that would be a negative. We don't really want to support that, especially if there's someone based who doesn't have to do that kind of travel that we could appoint. So I do think realistically, that's unlikely. I think for Scotland, that is not a factor. So I don't think we need to worry about that. And I think if you did have extra travel costs, we would definitely be flexible about paying that on top of the budget. Yeah, I think that's probably all I can say on that one. We don't have a hard and fast rule around that one.
I guess the only point I would add to that is, I guess you do need to have an understanding of the context in terms understanding the different models and the connections and the networks that I think they would need to have the UK context because all the work is involved in the UK. So that would be my only addition to that.
Moving on down the list. Now, I think there's one here. It says, do you have a preference for collective versus individuals applying? So I'll come to Aaliyah and Sam for this, whether you have a preference of this, and also you might have experiences of this yourselves in the various organisations.
I think having an individual, it's more intimate, one to one, it's clearer of who you're speaking to, but I think maybe, like having, I guess it's like, how big is the collective I would say, like, maybe two, because it's I would say like two to three people is good because you are working with, I think, was it like eight organisations? So, you're working with a handful of organisations, and personally, I think it would be like a lot for one person, but being able to bounce off those ideas and having someone to teamwork with them, because we're huge on collaboration and huge on being able to to have different perspectives. I think my preference, personally would be to have maybe up to three people, just because, if it's more than three, personally, too many voices, but three like it's a good amount of number to bounce off those ideas and get tasks done. But I don't know if Sam has any points to add to that as well.
I'd say I like, don't really mind, but kind of following on that point, like you, we want a space where the cohort and the learning partner is comfortable and there is a sort of safety and a trust that has built up over the course of the programme, so we wouldn't want to get to a point where it feels impersonal. They don't know who they're going to be talking to each time.
Thank you. I think that's a really good point, because actually, you don't want different people at each session. I'm just trying to think on some of the learning programmes we have at the moment. So the leaving care one which we is being in operation for, is it seven years, I think, now, and there's 36 organisations. There's two people that have always managed that relationship, and that started again, probably similar level of organisations, and it's grown over that period. And then for our New Connections, we're working with an organisation, Do It Now Now, and there's probably, there's a couple of key people, but they've also got wider organisational support that are chipping in but there's key people that hold the relationship. So, yeah, I'm just trying to think if there's any other programmes, Gina, that we might want reflect on. But I guess it's the connection, it's the capacity to deliver and not be too many different people.
I guess I would just say only, I mean, you've already said it. I totally agree with everything that's been said. I think if it's just one person, it's probably unlikely that we would appoint you alone, because it's just too much of a key person, risk for carrying it all yourself. It feels like too much. But if you can team up with somebody else, another consultant that wouldwork, and has worked in the past for people we've worked with.
Thank you. So the question now is, can you say a little more about the success? What success would look like for you at the end of year one delivery?
Who wants to jump in on that one? I mean, I could lead on this one. Actually, maybe I'll say my bit. Then you guys can chip in. I think year one, it really is going to be the foundational year. These are three year grants, and we're anticipating this learning relationship will be for the course of three years. So I think there's some key things in terms of, actually, us all coming together, getting to know each other, understanding each other's work, and like bonding. The co-design in the programme I think will take up quite a chunk of that first year, and actually what that looks like, and how we want to work together and also developing the reporting process. So our typical process is annual reports and accounts, etc, but we want this to be co-designed, and think about how that would look like, and it would need to meet the needs of, obviously, what IYPC want, what the organisations within the cohort want, as well as what are Esmée's audit processes that need to factor in as well. So I think that will be the co-design of the reporting and what the learning programme will look like. And then I think it's understanding what the extra needs are. So, we may have to bring in more things around capacity building, etc, but it's really identifying some of that work and just building, as Sam said, like building that trust, and it being like a really engaged, proactive space that people want to come to and aren't dreading or feeling they've got to come to, like we want it to be useful. But Sam, Aaliyah, do you want to add what success would look like for you for the first year?
Yeah, I don't want to be too prescriptive, because, frankly, I don't know. But I think the idea of building that rapport over the first year. I think a year goes very quickly, building rapport, building you know, a plan of what you're going to be doing the following year, and even finding out as a collective what you want to do for your next year. Maybe identifying a few problems you've had in that year and ways to improve upon your work for the second year would be a success to me.
Yeah, I think I'm just pretty much echoing what everyone said. I think being able to have that connection, being able to understand like I think after the first year, you should understand the people that you are connecting with, the organisations and understanding the stretch, because it's like, it's many different organisations, so being able to understand how you are going to approach each. Yeah, you should know your strategy. And you should start thinking about those weak spots and thinking about what is following on, because this is the foundation. And as a person who's never seen a learning partner, been around it like fully, I can't say too much, because this is new to me as well, but I think having that foundation of connection and being able to work well is key for me, as in successful.
Thank you very there's a question here on the budget. So you give an indication of budget, £25k for the first year, but also indicate there could be more budget for events in the application you can you ask for indicative budgets. Two questions: does this indicative budget need to go beyond the first year? Does this indicative budget need to include events and therefore go above the £25k so, Gina, do you want to speak to this?
Yeah, happy to do that. I mean, it's a peek behind the curtain, it's really hard to set a budget on these projects, and it's always impossible to do it for a co-design thing. And I guess usually people just set a budget around what they can afford. So what we've done is use the same budget that we have for our network coordinator for another programme, New Connections. So that's the £25k and there we really did think about, what are we expecting to be delivered? Like, how many days work, what kinds of events, what are we hoping for? So I would say what I would find helpful, and I hope it would be interesting to hear from the young consultants, if they feel the same, what I would find helpful in assessing a bid is essentially - use that £25k and tell us what you could deliver with that.
That gives us an indication of what your costs are, the kinds of things that you can see as being delivered within that. I think that's all we can do at the moment. When it comes to event costs, room hire, food, all of that stuff, Esmée would pay. On top of that, you do not have to put any of those costs in. The costs are just your costs. So your time and what it takes for you to deliver that work, that's it. So everything else would come out of Esmée budget. We'll pay for all of that. So yeah, so if you can just think about your time, whatwould you be able to deliver for £25k of your time in a year? If you want to say this budget is mad and completely half as big as it needs to be. And if I had £50k, I would deliver X, you can do that because we are we are open to that. It is particularly helpful to know if you just don't think this is realistic. Or if you want to give a couple of options where you say you could have one in-person event and lots of online stuff for this amount, but if you doubled the budget, you could do this, and that's what we recommend. We're interested and open to that too.
Thank you. Aaliyah, Sam, do you want to add anything to that?
No.
I was just gonna say, we just want to see your vision with it. So don't, as Gina say, sell yourself short if that's what you think it is. But also think what are the actual possibilities first. And if there is add on, then you have to be able to justify it as well. So make sure when you're saying anything, it is justifiable, and you're telling us the exact reasons why. This is so we can understand it. Be as clear as possible so we can understand where you're coming from. That's what I'm trying to say.
Thank you. There's another question, which might be kind of two questions. Could you provide some guidance on the expected level of experience across the target areas for the learning partner? And there's a similar question around, what experience are you particularly looking for? And I'm assuming this is relating to the key things, which is co-design, evaluation, inclusivity, creativity and influence, which is the criteria.
Sam, do you want to kick off with the level of experience, or the prioritisation of that?
I think what we're probably looking for, the bare minimum, is that you can evidence doing all of the key points in some way. I don't think we're necessarily prescriptive that it has to be, you know, a certain budget or level, but we want to see that you can evidence working in all these ways. We don't want to set you up for failure. We want you to be comfortable working in these ways, working with the cohort. So if you feel like you have maybe worked on one of these things, maybe in a slightly unusual way that's not often seen in the sector, but you feel strongly that it is, you can evidence that you have worked. Then, yeah, apply.
Sorry, working on the phone is really hard. I would just say, you don't have to have been a learning partner or, like, have done that exact role. But once you have done those elements, those are key. And if you haven't, if you if you have strengths in some, but you haven't been able to, let's say, like your main focus before wasn't inclusivity, because that wasn't like, a part of your job. You can say how you could probably do that within this role. So, but it's mainly about the co-design, the evaluation and the creativity and influence. I'm saying inclusivity is key, but some people's roles may not have been the most creative, but you have done it in other areas as well. So maybe try and see like if have a decent portfolio of it, and think about your capacity first as well before applying.
Thank you. Go for it Gina.
Yeah, just to add the first three, so the co-design evaluation or learning, it doesn't have to be like impact measurement or anything like that. Yeah, and working inclusively, I do think they're really important. Creativity is important too, but could be demonstrated in different ways. The last one just wanted to say on influence, that's something that we're not necessarily looking at in the first year, but we are thinking about the whole programme over three years. So the kind of contract in the first place would be for a year, but we want to appoint someone who could deliver three years worth of work, who could think about the product at the end. So whilst it's not something that we'll be concentrating on in the first year, it's something that we'd hope to come to fruition at the end. But how you talk about influencing others, or your connection to the arts and creativity sector, or youth sector, it could, it could be lots of different ways. We don't have a vision of what that looks like, necessarily, and I think that probably stands for most of it, although I would say on co-design and co-production, definitely look at the involving young people values (available on our website), because that is really important. We're not saying that's the only model of co-production that we would think about, but it's important to us, and I guess it's something that we might use in the assessment process.
Thank you. So this next one is for Gina and myself. Esmée has been traditionally quite closed. What has prompted the change in approach and how challenging is opening up for you?
I mean, I don't know. Do you want to go first Gina?
I just, I mean, I guess I want a conversation around this. Like, what does that mean? It's a really interesting question. Does it mean in like, sharing, doing this webinar, sharing this a bit more openly? Does it mean working with the involving young people collective. I guess I'm sort of interpreting it in lots of different ways. But the question, the follow up question, I guess, what prompted the change in approach? I feel like this has been a gradual push, and I think it's all of our jobs as an funder that has signed up to being open and trusting to be as open as we can about what we're thinking what we're doing. That doesn't always mean we'll be kind of completely open to applications on everything. I guess we're still making decisions ourselves about things, and whilst we're trying to share more about that, that doesn't always mean it's easy for people outside to influence us, and we know that. I think working with young people has changed quite a lot about us as an organisation. Really interesting to know what you think about that, Laura.
I'd agree, I think, like through the co-design process and Sam, Aaliyah, might be able to talk to this a bit more. The IYPC group did really push us on things in terms of what we would accept, in terms of the applications, the different processes for that, so video applications, the prioritisation of joy and care, which I don't think we've have done before. I don't think we would have done without IYPC bringing that in. And I think again, the tender, the process of actually having a webinar for a tender. So we do do webinars for our pre-application advice, etc, and for like, specific programmes. But in terms of doing it for a tender, I think that was Aaliyah, who's like, actually, the webinars are really helpful - especially for getting lots of information and getting more of a tone and the vibe and that kind of more conversational approach was really helpful. So it's why we're trialing it out. And obviously we can see from the number of questions, people are asking questions. We weren't sure if people would do in this space. So I think it's trialing these things, seeing how they work, seeing how we can improve them and adapt them for other areas of our work as well. But yeah, Aaliyah, you or Sam, did you want to add anything else on this? Or your experience of Esmée opening up more?
Sorry, could the question just be repeated again for me, please.
Sure, it was just saying that Esmée has traditionally been quite closed. So what's prompted us to be more open, and how are we finding that?
Yeah, so I think I'm like a part of the second, second cycle of IYPC, so that we have like, different cycles of young people coming through and from, like my perspective, with the youth-led creativity fund, and coming from a creative background, it was great for those who may not have had that creative experience in their younger years, or like in their background, to be able to have more of a say on things that you know could potentially affect us or the people that we know in our communities. I think because they are working with young people or trying to do projects that is involving young people, they realise that there needs to be some sort of say, and there shouldn't be a barrier of, you know, it is a particular group that sets things and are in charge of funding, and then we just only have a say in participating. It should be, we should have a say in co-design, we should be able to have a say in what this application may look like from maybe our previous application experiences, or the people or the organisations that we worked with's previous experiences are.
I feel like my experience has been pretty positive to be able to have this opportunity to see the other side. And I think the only way to learn is to have people on the receiving and be involved in the creation process, involved in all processes, because they're not consumers, but they are the participants. They are the fundees, they are, you know, the ones that are really enriched and involved in this community, and it is a community, so, yeah, I think it's just a way of them opening a door for our community, and we can also give back and still be involved, but in different aspects. And yeah, it's been positive, and it's been eye opening to see the level of in-depth and the level of care and understanding, and you realise you actually have to really be clear on your applications, because it's two differentworlds as well. So it's interesting to see why someone is not getting the picture. And then when you're on the receiving end of reading an application, you're like, oh, okay, now I understand. So it makes you understand the whole process of grant making in general as well.
Thank you. So a question now around evaluation: are you open to creative learning and evaluation. Bringing consensus on this evaluation is sometimes challenging. Are you accepting of this?
Yes, absolutely, that is a big yes.
Sam or Aaliyah, did you want to say anything else on that?
I need the question repeated.
Sorry, no worries. It says, are you open to creative learning evaluation, bringing consensus of this evaluation is sometimes challenging. Are you accepting of this?
Yeah, definitely.
Let me just have a look. There's some more operational stuff here. Do you have to be a charity? We are an asset locked social enterprise. Gina, is there any any advice on universities, non-charities, or for profit organisations tendering for this?
Yeah. So there's a lot of questions around this. This is not a grant. We will not make this from our grants budget. We will make it from a consultancy budget. You can be whatever. You can be a company. You can be in a collection of individuals, it doesn't matter. You can be a university. It doesn't matter. So, yeah, it really is fine. If you charge VAT, that's okay too, like we we will not discriminate on that basis. Yeah, so that's fine.
Day rates are really helpful to us. They help us understand the kind of comparative value that we might get out of different people. Just for kind of your benchmarking purposes, our indicative day rate for things that we proactively offer fees for consultants is £600 a day. That's not standardly applied across all of our work, because we're putting things out to tender where we've had kind of people put in bids where their rates are £400 a day. We've had people put in bids where their rates are £900 a day. We're going to make a decision based on what value we think we're going to get out of that.
Thank you. Another one of the questions, are you looking for the learning partner to also recruit additional young people to develop the programme, or should the partner work solely with the IYPC?
I have a quick reflection on this, and then I'll come to Sam and Aaliyah if you've got a view. But I think initially it will be IYPC working on this, but also the co-design with the funded organisations who all have many young people themselves. And I think part of that co-design will be if and how and when, like the young people who are involved in all the fund organisations are brought into that learning programme process. And again, there's different models for this in other learning programmes and then being separate or incorporated. So I think that will all be part of the co-design, but I don't think it will be looking for other external young people to come into this cohort, it will be working with the IYPC and then the young people linked to the organisations. But Sam and Aaliyah, did you have any other reflections or thoughts on that?
Yeah, I wouldn't go as like far to throw it out. I guess if I read that, my slight concern would be just slightly convoluting it with, you know, there's a lot of us, all the cohorts, are working with a lot of young people. Like, if you want young people, you've got a big resource of young people to potentially work with. I guess if you were putting that, then I'd kind of want to know what they would be able to do, which you wouldn't be able to get from the resources you already have.
Great. Thank you. There's another question here. So there's lots of questions around, like numbers and things like that. And we will respond to those, I think, written because it might be easier to write those responses. So I'm trying to do more of the conversational questions. So there's one here around: what is the end goal of this three year project? I'll come to Sam and Aaliyah for this first, as the co-designers of the fund. What's the end goal of the learning partner aspect, but I guess also of the wider fund.
Yeah, it's a big question. I would say again, I don't want to be prescriptive, but for me personally, you facilitate and help make comfortable a bunch of dope artists working with young people that have made a positive impact on the sector and on young people's lives, and you've created a way to share everything and celebrate everything that they have learned across the three years and everything they've achieved, and to really foster that network. So, even when the funding period is over, that they have, you know, relationships with other artists and organisations that they can go to and advice throughout their careers.
Thank you. Think I would add to that. I think we're really interested in identifying these really good models of practice and how we can share that. So actually, how can we, and again, I think this is like, towards the end of the three years, how can we share all that information with the youth sector or creative sector, to actually really embed youth led creativity across the across different organisations and institutions? I'm interested, in time, the more of the longer term, something on influencing but also really embedding that good practice and sharing that learning throughout the programme. Aaliyah, do you want to come in?
Yeah, I would say a creative network that has been like, supported. I think it's, I think it's definitely the creative network of learning and seeing, like, where, where we can go, like when we do the youth led creativity fund again, if we do it again, you know, to see where we can grow, where the organisations can go. And yeah, I would say a creative network of support. That's my end goal.
Thank you. We've got time for a couple more questions. So hopefully we'll whizz through these. Will consultant travel come out of Esmée's budget? And would support for accessibility for disabled consultants also come out of this budget. We would be providing additional costs for accessibility support. But Gina, did you have anything else on the budget?
Yeah, there's a few questions about budget, and I'm so sorry, but it is really hard to answer them, because ultimately, this is a co-design project, so it will depend on what's delivered, what the costs are. But there was one other question around a group of consultants who had access needs that they would need to spend more money on, definitely think of that in addition to the £25k so if you're thinking about, what could we deliver for £25k, put that down, and then do you say there would be additional costs for access needs or whatever it is that you need. That's fine, and we're definitely open to that, and want to hear that. So, yeah, do put that in. And I think we'd had another question about travel as well.
Put it in as a separate item, and then I guess we'll see what it is. We just don't know how much is going to be in person at the moment, so I think if it makes sense to split it out, that's fine, too.
Great. Thank you. There's another question here on what does creative learning evaluation look like to you, what is the expectation of how creativity will show up in this work? And I feel like this is an ongoing conversation throughout the entire design of the programme, how does creativity show up, and how can we make sure it's throughout. Sam, Aaliyah, do you have any reflections on that?
Yeah, I guess, that is completely up to you and the cohort interpretation. Firstly, that's not for us to tell you what creative evaluation is. That's for you to have your own ideas and the cohort to have their own ideas and to come together and work that out. The only thing I would say, with my own opinions of creative evaluation is just going beyond that thing where, you know, young people are forced to sit down with a pencil and scribble in a bunch of answers to questions they don't care about and they just want to, you know, leave at the end of the day or go have their lunch. I think we want to a new, more interesting way of being able to tell organisation stories, and for young people to be able to tell their own stories within those organisations.
Aaliyah, yeah, for me, creativity is innovation. I think with all creative forms, there is some sort of innovation in it. And if you're thinking about creative evaluation, think of the ways that as creativity is subjective. Think about how you, as Sam said, how you can get those messages of how you can tell those stories in multiple different forms. And think about what forms of creativity the organisations are already using as well, and think about how you can incorporate that. But it is not us. It sorry. It's not for us to tell you, but it's for you to expand and see how these stories, how these things, can be told in an alternative way.
Thank you. Just trying to pack in a couple more before we have to wrap up. So what was the age range of the young people? I'm assuming they mean the young people that the fund is supporting. So in terms of the criteria for the applications, the age range of 14 to 30. So that's predominantly what age ranges come. I'm sure some of the organisations we work with do work with a variation of that. But the majority of the young people involved will be 14 to 30.
There was another question, I think, on whether the funder cohort had experience of learning partners, and I don't think we've asked them. I think during the assessment, we didn't ask them specifically around if they'd had experience of learning partners. We asked them what they wanted from a learning partner. So I think in short, if they had, that would have fed into this slide that Aaliyah presented on what the organisations have said. But we don't know exactly who has had experience of learning partners.
Just quickly seeing those other quick ones we can do in like four minutes. What is the expected time commitment from the learning partner? Do you have expectations around minimum days per month or quarter?
Gina? Do you have any reflection of that? Again, is it co-design?
It's a co-design one. I would say it's going to involve a level of regular contact. So whether that's regular contact with the funded organisations or regular contact with Laura and the young people collective, but that doesn't need to be onerous. And I'm guessing, like a day a month, or half a day a month is going to hit that so, but there'll be, I'm guessing we would think more around structuring things around events, rather than regular, constant contact. Everyone that we fund will be busy. They will have things that they're delivering. It might make more sense to kind of concentrate communication with them around events or online meetings or whatever that is, so that they're able to connect with that rather than expecting to have to keep reading lots of stuff. I don't feel like that's really the way it would work best.
And there's another question here. Could you provide any insight into the level of interest in this opportunity, or the anticipated number of applicants to have a sense of the competitive landscape, would be very helpful and understand the process. For this webinar, we had 157 people sign up and I think there was 108 on here at one point. So that's a level of interest. We're aware this fund does cross the youth sector and the creative sector. So I expect it will be competitive.
The really key thing is if you can evidence everything on that criteria, because we will have to be really strict on that, and we don't want to waste people's time. So I think we will be looking for people who can deliver on all aspects of that criteria. In other tender processes we've done, I know that for the New Connections work, I think it was around 70 bids, but yeah, it is competitive. We are expecting quite a lot of applications. So I think that's why, if you think you're a strong match, then by all means, do tender. But I guess it's not one to do on a whim. I think if you've only got partial experience of some of the work. Is there anything else you want to add to that, Gina, before we wrap up?
No.
Okay. Well, thank you so much for everyone's engagement. Thank you to my colleagues for asking questions and also in the background who have been typing away and managing the tech. We will be sharing the recording, the live transcript, and any questions we haven't been able to answer. We will answer and share all that on our website next week.
A reminder that the deadline is 5pm on the 18th of November. So good luck if you're applying. And thank you very much for your interest and engagement in this session.
