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Battersea Arts Centre and The Eden Project will receive a total of £710,000 from Arts Council England’s Ambition for Excellence programme, funded by the National Lottery.

Working with communities, Battersea Arts Centre will use a grant of £360,000 to run a national network of interdisciplinary cultural organisations to co-create and disseminate knowledge on how to distribute world-class, socially-engaged, artistic projects. The work will be focused away from London and led by producers who are committed to using arts and culture to drive social change. Battersea Arts Centre will develop practical, tested solutions, to enable a step-change in the wider arts sector and ensure excellent art is relevant to communities across the country.

The Eden Project will use a grant of £350,000 to establish Eden as a major hub for the arts in Mid and East Cornwall. They will commission and host works of exceptional quality focusing on sculptural, outdoor and digital art; deliver an arts leadership programme developed in consultation with a network of cultural organisations and arts practitioners; and manage a programme of co-curated residencies, temporary exhibitions, live performances and workshops at Eden and beyond.

Find out more about the Ambition for Excellence fund here.

For more information contact:
Alison Millar, Communications Officer, Arts Council England
Tel: 0207 268 9648 Email: Alison.Millar@artscouncil.org.uk

David Jubb, Artistic Director and CEO, Battersea Arts Centre, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have Arts Council England’s support for this idea, and we will be sharing more details in March.”

Gordon Seabright, chief executive of the Eden Project, said: “We are truly delighted to receive the Ambition for Excellence award from the Arts Council. It will enable us to make a major step change and roll up our sleeves to bring Eden’s arts strategy to reality. We look forward to working with our arts advisory panel, cultural organisations and practitioners to commission and host great art, develop programmes with and for the arts, explore ambitious ideas and share this with a large audience. Thank you to all those who helped us to get here.”

This is our penultimate Ambition for Excellence round. Following the final round (round 25), Ambition for Excellence funding can be accessed through Project Grants. Project Grants will be open to applications from March 2018 for museums, libraries, artists and arts organisations for individual projects. £14m per year of this will be reserved to support nationally significant projects of £100k and above, including some of the activity previously supported by the Ambition for Excellence and Strategic Touring funds. National Portfolio Organisations will be able to apply to this reserved strand of funding, and detailed applicant guidelines will be published on the 12 February.

Arts Council England champions, develops and invests in artistic and cultural experiences that enrich people’s lives. We support a range of activities across the arts, museums and libraries – from theatre to digital art, reading to dance, music to literature, and crafts to collections. Great art and culture inspires us, brings us together and teaches us about ourselves and the world around us. In short, it makes life better. We invest public money from government and the National Lottery to help create these experiences for as many people as possible across the country. www.artscouncil.org.uk