The team at intoBodmin are very grateful to be accepted as a client on Arts Council England’s National Portfolio. This means a great deal for Bodmin and the communities which we serve and we feel humbled for being recognised in this way for both our future projections and the work we have done to date.  As  an organisation with bold plans, this support, along with that of Cornwall Council, gives us the stability to continue work with our partners and further our ambitions across the next three years in investing in the creative health of the people of Bodmin.

But what on earth is an NPO?

Well, in its literal terms, it’s a National Portfolio Organisation, receiving regular funding (for three years) from Arts Council England. We’re one of 990 organisations nationally, including the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and Battersea Arts Centre, and one of 9 organisations in Cornwall, including the Hall for Cornwall, Miracle Theatre and Newlyn Art Gallery. It’s an incredible achievement for intoBodmin to be accepted onto this prestigious list of arts organisations and will mean that our community work can continue. This includes our performance and events programme, creative and wellbeing activities in the community cafe, and community-led and co-created arts projects. We will receive £80k a year from ACE which contributes one third of the income we need to run intoBodmin, helping to pay staff, overheads and a creative projects budget.

You won’t see any major changes, as the money we get is akin to that we’ve received annually for the last three years, but it does mean we don’t need to be reapplying and can therefore really invest our time into developing the way that we work and the people we work with.

Whilst it’s great to be recognised in this way, we appreciate that other partners have not been successful, we understand the hard work that was invested in submitting to the scheme and we share concerns in rising costs and the difficulties we all face for the future.

As a CIC, we will do all we can to support partner organisations and communities over the coming years, through our on-going free and subsidised food and creative offers to communities in need, the development of new engagement work with our communities and supporting artists in developing their practice in this way.

So this is big news and we’re really proud and credit is due to all the amazing staff, artists and participants that meant we could clearly demonstrate the value that arts and culture can bring to building a strong and creative community.

Fin