Funding Themes

To be eligible for funding, your organisation's main aims and objectives must fit with one of the funding themes listed below: 

  • Enabling participation in the arts - Organisations whose core work helps people overcome specific barriers to accessing the arts. Applications must show how their activities directly remove, or support people to overcome, these barriers
  • Preventing or reducing the impact of poverty - Organisations that support people at risk of or living in poverty. Applications must demonstrate specialist, ongoing support that directly addresses the causes or impacts of poverty
  • Supporting marginalised groups and/or tackling inequality - Organisations whose primary purpose is to support specific marginalised communities to fully participate in social, economic, political or cultural life. Applicants must be able to demonstrate how their work helps overcome systemic barriers
  • Improving mental health - Organisations that support people experiencing mental ill-health, rather than general mental wellbeing. Applicants must demonstrate ongoing, specific support for mental health conditions as a core purpose, rather than occasional or general social, wellbeing activities
    • Our focus will be on organisations that are actively supporting specific mental health issues, rather than general mental wellbeing activities.

Our physical activity and environment themes are delivered through our partnership programmes, so please take our eligibility quiz to see if one of these programmes would be more suitable. If the core purpose of your organisation is around physical activity or the environment, please apply to these programmes instead. 

Funding rounds are consistently oversubscribed, meaning that not all strong applications can be supported. To assist with decision-making, priority may be given to organisations that meet one or more of the following:

  • Have an income of £250,000 or below
  • Work in communities located in the top 15% of the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation
  • Organisations whose main activities are focused on supporting marginalised groups. This could include, but is not limited to, disabled people, communities experiencing racial inequity, and LGBT+ people.
  • Are in areas that have not recently received funding. For this, we will primarily be looking at postcode areas (eg. EHX XXX) that have not received funding in the last 12 months. You can find a list of organisations supported here. 

It is important to note that the strength of an organisation's overall application is the primary factor in our decision making.

More information on this can be found in our FAQs.

To visit the Organisation Criteria page of our funding guide, click here.