You’ll find full details on the programme in the Arts, Health & Wellbeing Guidelines.
Arts projects aiming to improve people’s health and wellbeing by connecting them with nature are an additional, new priority for Arts Council of Wales’ Arts, Health and Wellbeing lottery funding from this autumn.
Partnerships between Wales’ arts, health and nature organisations are among those encouraged to apply for one of three levels of Arts, Health and Wellbeing Lottery funding as part of the Creative Nature Programme, an agreement between Arts Council of Wales and Natural Resources Wales that aims to cultivate the relationship between the arts and the natural environment.
Who can apply?
The Arts Health and Wellbeing Fund is open to partnership bids from across the arts, health, social care, nature, environmental and third sectors. Projects that address one or more of the following health challenges and priorities are eligible to apply:
- Nature - projects that aim to improve people’s health and wellbeing by increasing their connection with nature through the arts;
- Mental health - including tackling loneliness, social isolation and social prescribing schemes that aim to build resilience and support better mental health;
- Health inequalities - Arts projects designed to address health inequalities by bringing health and wellbeing benefits to people from more diverse and under-represented backgrounds;
- Physical health and wellbeing – arts projects that support improved physical health or keep people physically active ;
- Staff wellbeing - within the healthcare and/or arts workforce.
Applications should be developed by a partnership/consortium of organisations and artists and must include both a health and arts partner (as well as a nature partner if your project focuses on Arts, Health & Nature). One of the partners will need to assume the lead, submitting the application and acting as the accountable body.
When can I apply?
The Fund will open on 20 November 2024 and will close at 5pm on 22 January 2025.
If you’re applying for £50,000 or under (including additional access costs), we’ll try and get a decision to you within 8 weeks from the deadline date.
Applications requesting over £50,000 (including additional access costs) will receive a decision within 12 weeks from the deadline.
We’re happy to talk to you about your project and help you develop it. You can email us at artsandhealth@arts.wales for more information or to start a conversation about a project.
You can also contact our Grants and Information team at grants@arts.wales
We would usually expect a health partner to be either a publicly funded or charitable organisation and service provider that is established and registered to specifically deliver health or social care services by a qualified/specialised workforce. A health partner could therefore be a Health Board / NHS Trust / GP cluster or an organisation providing social care. Equally, it could be a third sector organisation whose work focuses strongly on health and wellbeing. If you’re unsure whether your partner would be recognised as a health partner, please discuss this with us before starting your application.
As explained in our Guidelines, the Arts, Health & Wellbeing Fund can accept applications for funding of between £500 and £50,000. In rare and exceptional cases (where a programme has already been successfully developed and is ready for significant scaling-up or extends over a few years) applications higher than the £50,000 limit may be considered. You should talk to us if you think you have a programme at this stage to obtain special permission before making an application that exceeds the £50,000 limit. We are anticipating that the fund will be heavily over-subscribed and therefore advise applicants to consider their budget carefully and only request the amount that is needed.
Yes, multi-year funded organisations are eligible to apply. However, we’d encourage you to discuss your proposal with your ‘lead’ officer ahead of making an application so that we’re aware of how your projects fits with your other funded activity.
Yes, you can be a lead partner on one application and a partner on another. However, if this is the case, you’ll need to make sure that your organisation has the capacity to deliver multiple projects effectively and you should make this clear in your application. You should also bear in mind that any applications your make will be in direct competition with each other in what is expected to be a highly over-subscribed round.
It's hard to predict likely success rates but we continue to experience exceptionally high demand for all our lottery funds and expect the Arts, Health & Wellbeing Fund to be heavily over-subscribed also. If your project is not time-critical, you may want to consider delaying your application until the next deadline.
Organisations can apply for funding to design and deliver Arts & Health-related training related to the priority areas of Improved mental health; tackling loneliness and social isolation; prevention; social prescribing models; perinatal mental health; dementia / healthy ageing; managing long-term and life-limiting conditions; social care; arts and health evaluation. A training project could be a stand-alone project or part of the test, invest or scale levels. This can be for staff to deliver a project. 10% match funding is required for a training project.
The next round will open in November 2024. If you'd like to contact the team about your please contact: artsandhealth@arts.wales
This could be an environmental charity, agency or public body, an organisation that owns or maintains publicly accessible outdoor spaces (such as the National Trust), or organisations that campaign for climate justice.
Please see the https://arts.wales/budget-help-notes
Match funding (either, 10%, 25% or 40% depending on the project level) accounts for the % of the project total. Ideally some (if not all) of the match funding should come from the health partner to demonstrate the investment from health, however, this can also come from other areas such as the nature partner (if relevant). Additionally some can come from external funding, your own funds and in-kind support.