I’m somewhat overawed to be supported by Arts Council England for my new R&D project, Neurophototherapy!
This time I haven’t rushed onto social media immediately to announce my good news. It’s taken a few days to process what I want to say, in all the mayhem. It’s difficult to celebrate – at the time of writing, the UK has left the EU and the NHS is teetering on the brink of overwhelm, during a 3rd (and insufficient) lockdown. So I’m writing a brief blog post about my thoughts and feelings instead.
To my astonishment, ACE turned my application around in precisely 6 weeks to the day. Christmas and the pandemic notwithstanding, ACE is doing a remarkably efficient job of processing artists applications, and I’m hearing of many more individual artists getting funding than previously. I’m in awe of, and grateful to everyone at ACE who administers the system of grant giving at this time of national, not to say, global crisis. I feel so much about the system itself needs to change, but there is now (I perceive) more take-up of ACE’s Access Support by artists to help them make applications, and Access Support is becoming more known about. This is something I’m part of too. I’m delighted to be currently supporting two excellent neurodivergent projects in the making, through the Access Support provision. It’s time consuming, but I do as much of this as I can.
My project will begin in earnest in February, and I look forward to writing what Neurophototherapy is about, and share my soul journey into immersive and iterative, practice-led research, both in this blog and a new Instagram account.
Meanwhile, thank you so very much Arts Council England for believing in my project.
