BAF SYNOPSIS ~ Hannah Marsland

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Burrard Arts Foundation (BAF) Internship

For my CBEL partnership I was paired with BAF and assigned the role of grant writing assistant. Though the responsibility didn’t commence until quite late into the term, I feel very fulfilled and was able to get in my 40 hours (minimum). My job position did not extend beyond any other realm of duties, how ever it can be broken down chronologically into the steps that took place to get to the December 7th deadline.

  • I researched the City of Vancouver’s Cultural Project Grant and downloaded eligibility guidelines to cross-reference with BAF and their public role in Vancouver’s art community
  • After my second meeting with Kate Bellringer, where she shared with the necessary dates and deadlines, I was instructed to familiarize myself with BAF’s exhibition and project archive, as well as their mandate.
  • I am briefed on what project is being proposed for the grant, which is their BAF 2017 Residency . Kate gave me the email of Karen Hasselfelt who is a Cultural Planner for the City of Vancouver and instructed me to send her a brief email that entailed a synopsis of the project and why we are suitable for this grant in particular
  • Early November we are given access to the application form, which is now an online format. Kate and I discussed how much of the grant I would cover which was essentially as much as I could. For example things I did not have access to were 1) finances 2) board of directors 3) knowledge of the previous grant etc.
  • Henceforth most of my remaining hours were spent further researching BAF and completing the bulk of the essay blocks. These included:
    • Summarize the history of the organization 
    • One Sentence Project Description
    • Discuss the artistic vision and rationale for the proposed project
    • Describe the proposed project, the project’s goals and the arts programming taking place
    • Who are the intended primary audiences and participants of the proposed project (i.e. artists, organizations, general public, members, individuals or communities)?
    • How will you promote the proposed project to the public?
    • How will you evaluate the proposed project to determine its reach and impact on audiences, participants and artists, and if it has achieved the project goals?

 

  • Each week I would meet with Kate for a few hours to discuss any edits to the text and give me tips on the language style that a big grant warrants. For example I had already concluded it must be concise but I did not know you must also write with assertion. “BAF intends to __” vs. “BAF will do __”. During our meetings Kate would also answer any questions or give me different levels of access to helpful documents concerning the project
  • On November 22nd Kate and I attended a workshop meeting titled ‘Grant Online Application Workshop’ which was more to cover the technicalities of the online aspect more than the content of the application. It was however interesting to gain insight into the variety of organizations that apply
  • On December 1st we had our final meeting where we ran through the entirety of the grant to ensure that between the two if us there was nothing missing and that what I’d written presented BAF accurately (which it did!).

Changes

The changes in my role were largely due to the rate of communication between Cultural Services and myself. Despite sending an email on the day of my instruction, it took an additional two weeks before the City of Vancouver gave BAF access to the online application.

Skills

I utilized my writing and research skills for the project, and bettered my ability to be concise. This was mostly due to word counts throughout the document, which at times felt meager in comparison to content demands. I also acquired knowledge of language that is essential for grants. I had no awareness that language should be assertive (as mentioned above) and learnt the fine line between this and being brazen.

I greatly appreciated this exposure and was able to transpose these skills into a personal grant recently submitted.

 

 

Burrard Arts Foundation Grant Writing Assistant, October – December 2017

Assisted BAF in the completion of their proposal for the 2017 Cultural Project Grant. Organized email correspondence between the City and BAF, conducted detailed research (on both the COV and BAF) and independently composed many components of their application. Gained an assertive, concise writing style.