Life's A Pitch: Funding Research

When thinking about funding for our business we honestly didn't know where to start, so simply by googling we came across the direct gov generator for business funding. 

Here are some suggestions we came across, based on our Business having 5 employees, and sitting in the start-up service industry category.

Arts Council Funding Programmes

Grants for programming costs, organising and running arts programmes through the year

• Building Repair Grants - Scotland

  Financial help for repairing historic buildings in Scotland

• CultureStep - Wales

  This scheme is designed to encourage new investment and develop established business engagement with the arts.

• Grants for historic buildings, monuments and designed landscapes (England)

  Grants for repair and conservation of historic buildings, monuments and landscapes

• Historic area regeneration grants

  Financial support for restoring and repairing historic buildings

• Regeneration Funding Support - Bridgend

  Support to businesses to help them secure grant funding
• Although alot of these programmes are location based (and not in Leeds, where our business would be located) this exercise was really useful in terms of getting an idea of what types of funding shcemes are available to businesses. Also knowing about the directgov generator is really valueable.
  
  Also in terms of drawing up our costings, I personally have no idea where to start with that, however team member Sol has informed us of a project she has previously been involved in, where she gained alot of experience with writing up costings etc,  which will be really useful for our presentation. 

Life's A Pitch: Research

I have already identified some existing companies that are similar to ours, whom we gained inspiration from. However, Mel has recently told us about the Turner Prize winners Assemble who have a really similar business concept to what we hope to achieve.

"Assemble have been nominated for projects including the ongoing collaboration with local residents and others in the Granby Four Streets, Liverpool"
Assemble are a group that regenerate rundown areas to create art. When their projects are complete they celebrate with a street festival.

The only thing that they do differently to our proposed business concept, is that they are based heavily on "fine art", installations and bigger scale projects that are more about concept than how it looks. We intend to base our work solely on contemporary illustration to help make it more accessible to the general public, in an attempt to help celebrate certain locations heritage. 

Other urban renewal projects that have similarities to our concept:
http://www.fodors.com/news/photos/worlds-coolest-urban-renewal-projects#!2-798-art-zone

http://bestiala.com/community/

http://little-people.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.ghosttt.com/rainbow-neighbourhood-graffiti-urban-renewal-in-mexico/

A project that painted a whole village in a rainbow mural; the artwork had an effect on crime rates and found that it brought the town closer together, creating a greater sense of community; These are both benefits of urban renewal that we could include in our presentation.

LIfe's A Pitch: Business Concept & Manifesto

Once again our group took this session as an opportunity to round off our ideas and refresh our memories on what we want to achieve. Admittedly we haven't really been in contact regarding this project outside of the sessions, which is something we have agreed to work on - Facebook group? Also the poor attendance in our group is making it more difficult to keep a clear focus on what we are actually doing. 

Our Business Concept + Manifesto broken down

The breaking down of our business was really useful in helping the development of our business concept progress. Identifying where we would sit in terms of sectors and service categories will be helpful in researching funding. This exercise highlighted the areas that our business concept was lacking, needed more research etc, for example other possible industries we could belong to.

Our business manifesto - when writing it, we took inspiration from our haiku, in terms of tone of voice and choice of language, which is a really key element in communicating our business to clients. We Identified our target audience to be Councils of places that we intend to feature our work in, who we would have to approach and present to, basing our decisions on how they would be interpreted by this particular audience. We wanted to maintain quite a formal and professional feel, including elements of compassion, and highlighting our personal passions for the project. 

We included the term 'non-profit organisation' in our initial manifesto, which we were urged to change. In the real world, our team as the employees of the business would need some form of salary - we will revisit our manifesto before we deliver the presentation. Apart from that we received positive feedback on our manifesto, and it was said that our choice of language was really appropriate to the target audience, and convincing. 

Doug Hindson

Animation Showreel from Doug Hindson on Vimeo.