What Actually Happens When a Writer Decides to Apply for Funding. Day by Day. Spreadsheet by Spreadsheet.
There is a version of this story where I sat down at my desk in early March, opened the Arts Council website, read the guidelines carefully, made a cup of tea, and began filling in the application form in a calm and organised fashion.
That version did not happen.
This is the version that did.
Oh and also, these are not consecutive days. These are the days I sat down and did stuff. I did take days in between to do, like, life. Important that you do that, if you’re tackling a similar application. So this is a condensed version of the diary, which actually spread across a fortnight or so.
—Day One. The Optimism. —
It is a Tuesday. The deadline is Thursday 19th March. At 5:30 p.m. I have, by my own reckoning, plenty of time. Loaaads of time.
I open the Arts Council website. I find the Arts Grant Funding 2027 page. I download the application form. It is a Word document. It is 37 pages long.
I make a cup of tea.
I open the form.
I close the form.
I make another cup of tea.
“The Arts Council application form is 37 pages long. I have written shorter novels. I have not written better ones.”
I open the form again.
I try to type in my name, so I can close it again.
I realise the file is ‘View Only’. The form is already starting to resist me. That is not a good start.
I don’t have too many menus. Finally, I find it. I click on ‘Edit’. The form reveals itself, in all its glory. Is it too soon for tea?
This time I read the first section properly. There are questions about my artistic practice, which, truth be told, I don’t know how to answer. There are more, about my proposal, my outcomes, my feasibility, my budget, my audience, my public engagement strategy, my dissemination plan, and something called an AAR template which I have never heard of in my life.
I write down the word AAR on a piece of paper and stare at it.
I try to say ‘AAR’.
I go for a walk with the dogs.
—Day Two. The Discovery.
I now know what an AAR is.
It stands for Arts Activity Report. It is a separate Excel template that you download from the Arts Council website. It is not the application form. It is not the budget. It is its own magnificent, terrifying thing, with its own tabs and its own dropdowns and its own columns that need to be filled in, cell by painful cell, for every single activity in your proposal. It reminds me a bit of Biology.
I have 20 activities planned for 2027.
I have 19 activities planned for 2028.
That is 39 rows in the AAR. Each row has approximately 14 columns. AARRGH.
I open Excel.
I have not used Excel seriously since I had to do forecasting back in my publishing days.
It comes back to you. Like cycling.
Like grief.
I wonder if the dogs need a walk.
“Excel does not care that you are a writer. Excel does not care about anything. Excel does not let you… excel. Sharp exhale.”
I spend four hours on the AAR. I fill in the activity names, the artform dropdowns, the activity type dropdowns, the target audience dropdowns, the financial figures, the audience numbers, the number of events, the number of artists involved.
There is no copy and paste function. It is all hard, manual labour, in the form of keyboard clacking.
I feel like dropping down, myself. To the ground. With a Crunchie.
Some of the columns I do not fully understand. I make my best guess. I move on.
At 11pm I save the file, close the laptop, and go to bed.
I almost forgot the dogs.
Maybe I should have tea.
My inner Goddess advises against it. I listen, for once.
I dream about dropdowns.
—Day Three. The Budget Incident.
Day three is the day I discover the Individual Activity Budgets.
I had done the AAR. I had calculated my overall budget. I had distributed my author fee across activities with what I felt was admirable precision. I was, if I am honest, feeling rather pleased with myself. I thought this side of the shitshow was done.
Oh, how wrong I was. How very, very wrong.
And then I read this sentence in the guidelines.
“Provide a detailed budget for each of your proposed activities.”
Erm, what?
‘Each.’
No no, that must be wrong. I take off my glasses, polish them. Put them back on.
I read it again.
‘Each of your proposed activities.’
I have 39 proposed activities.
That means 39 individual budget templates. Each one to be done separately. Each one filled in with its own expenditure lines, its own income lines, its own total, cross-referenced against the AAR, balanced precariously, like only figures do, as if they were gymnasts, on one of those balancing beams.
Is it too early to have wine?
I sit very still for a moment.
Outside, a robin lands on the fence post and looks at me through the window. We regard each other in silence.
Did he just wink?
I open the Individual Activity Budget template.
My eye twitches. Did I just wink?
I swear the robin is laughing, a hollow, evil sort of laugh. Something squawks. A crow has joined him. I close the curtains. It is eight in the morning.
I begin.
“I almost cry at activity 14. By activity 27 I have achieved a kind of spreadsheet nirvana. By activity 39 I am someone else entirely.”
— Day Four. The People.
Somewhere in the middle of the budget spreadsheets I remember that I need evidence of support from every confirmed partner in my application. Whatever that means. It means something different than it did in primary school, anyway.
I have listed, at various points in the form, a historian, a journalist, a librarian, a community organisation, an illustrator, a concept artist, a bookshop owner, a distillery, a local TD, two newspapers and a documentary production company.
Some of these people have confirmed their involvement.
Some I haven’t asked yet. And I’m pretty much out of time.
Some of them confirmed it in a WhatsApp message three weeks ago.
Some of them I need to contact again to make absolutely sure they are still on board and have not forgotten that they agreed to be part of a two year Arts Council funded literary project about Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes.
I spend the morning sending very warm, very calm, not at all panicked messages.
I remember to write to the one that I am sort of in awe of. A historian who broke the story about the Mother and Baby Homes in the first place. I really would love to talk to her but don’t want to appear too fangirly. I finally find the right tone, or thereabouts, only half-gushy. I press send.
Some of them reply. Others take their time. I am calm. I am very calm.
The dogs join me in a cigarette.
The robin, sadly, is absent.
I screenshot everything.
— Day Five. The Writing Samples.
In the middle of all the spreadsheets and the dropdowns and the evidence gathering I have almost forgotten that I am, at heart, a writer, and that there is a section of this application that asks me to submit examples of my work.
I choose the opening pages of The Hut. The novel I have been writing for the past year. The novel that started as a short story and became, somewhere along the way, one of the most important things I have ever written.
It started as an idea, sparked by an article I read, about Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes. There was one in Cork City. I dug and I read more and I dug more. It was week three of our Masters, and we were submitting pieces for peer review. And this one, well. I felt in my bones that this was one that needed to get out there, into the world.
And that was before I found out that Mother and Baby Home was still active while I was still at university. What. The. Actual. Fuck.
As with those few, select pieces I am actually happy with, this story almost poured out of me, fully formed. A bit like the story I wrote about Hillsborough. A bit like the story I wrote about clerical sexual abuse, that got to the top ten at Listowel Writers’ Week, when no one was really talking about it yet.
That particular story, which, well, it was called Thirteen… I then was invited to perform it, as much as one can perform a flash fiction story at the inaugural Fiction Slam, in front of an audience of about 200. It was like that scene in Friends when Rachel wears that negligé and the parents walk in and the consensus is that LA wasn’t ready. Kerry, not ready either.
Anyway. I believe in that story. I still do.
I choose Thirteen to include in my writing samples.
They might call me and ask me if I’m OK. I write about happy stuff too. Honestly.
I read through both stories before I attach them to the application.
I stop myself from tinkering, from changing bits. The editor in me. I can’t help myself. My stories are never done. Yes, these are. These are finished and these are good.
I had forgotten, in all the spreadsheets, that these stories were good.
“In the middle of the budget templates and the AAR rows and the file naming conventions, I almost forgot that there was a story. Then I read the first page again. And I remembered why I started.”
— Day Six. The Upload.
The deadline is tomorrow. It is 8 pm. I have everything ready. I think.
I have:
The application form
The AAR for 2027
The AAR for 2028
39 Individual Activity Budget templates combined into two files
Three supporting plans, for audience, for public engagement, for dissemination. I feel like I am planting a garden. Maybe I am.
Biographies for three people
Evidence of support from multiple confirmed partners
Writing samples
A disability access costs document
A commissioning statement
Two illustrations
I open the portal.
I need tea.
My email pings. It is the historian.
I have a cigarette.
I sit back down.
I begin uploading.
The first document goes through immediately. I feel a small rush of relief.
The second document also goes through. I feel cautiously optimistic.
The application form is next. Rejected. Fuck.
I check the guidelines. It clearly states it accepts .docx files.
I try again.
It clearly doesn’t accept this .docx file. I feel a mild nauseating feeling rising in my gut.
I ask Claude.
Claude gently suggests to try a .doc format. He even tells me how to save it as such, though, Claude, darling, I did know that.
I hit save on the application.
“The portal rejected my application form with a message that said, among other things, check your date format. It wanted a .doc file. I had uploaded a .docx file. I had to save it like it was 1999.”
There is a tapping at the door.
I open the door. No one there.
I close it again, and realise there is a breeze blowing straight through the built-in letterbox. This was all the rage, ca. 1986, and I live in an old cottage. The wind blew the small towel I had wedged into the letter box straight down, and was having fun, ventilating my house, making loud rapping sounds.
I’m glad it wasn’t the crow.
I wedge a bigger towel in, and tape it with masking tape.
I sit back down. The site has timed out, and I need to log in again. Luckily I saved the login details. And luckily, it has saved my progress.
I save the form as a .doc file.
I upload it again.
It goes through.
I continue uploading. Document by document. Dropdown by dropdown. Note by note.
It takes forty-seven minutes from beginning to end.
At 4.43pm I reach the final screen.
I check the funding category. It says Artists Support. It should say Literature English. I go back and change it. Thankfully, it lets me.
I check the amount requested. It is correct.
I check that all fifteen documents are listed as uploaded. They are.
I read the declaration.
I tick the box.
I click Submit.
The robin would be so proud.
The Confirmation Screen.
Your application has been successfully submitted. You can follow its progress by clicking on the My Applications tab on the homepage of online services.
Applicant: Niamh Cooper ARN: 12345 Funding: Literature English — Arts Grant Funding 2027
I take a screenshot.
Should there not be bells or whistles or something? Or that confetti that falls when you submit an assignment on TurnItIn?
Crickets.
Ping. I get an email confirmation. They have received my application.
Ping Ping. They have given me a reference number.
I suppose that’s their confetti.
I close the laptop.
I get up from my desk in this cosy corner of West Cork, and stand by the window, looking out at the sea.
I think about Lucy. Twelve years old. Born in a Mother and Baby Home. Running through a forest towards the Hut. The Hut that finds you, when you need it most.
I think about the women whose stories made her possible. And necessary.
The historian who emailed me back, and said my writing was ‘brilliant’, ‘vivid’, ‘too real to call fiction’.
The journalist who said she would help carry it into the world.
I think about the seven books I am going to write.
And then I make a cup of tea.
What Happens Next
Now I wait. The Arts Council will assess applications over the coming months. I will hear back in due course, which is a phrase that means exactly as long as it takes and not a moment sooner.
In the meantime I am going to keep writing The Hut. Keep publishing here. Keep writing my daft notes and crazy musings about being a writer and a mother, and a carer of sorts, and just a wild girl, living in her cottage by the sea. And I will write about The Hut.
It is so important to me, I could burst.
Because the application was never really about the money. The money would help, enormously, and I want it very much. But the application is also about saying out loud, in 37 pages and 39 spreadsheets, that this story matters. And I am the person to tell it.
I believe that.
I always believed it.
I just needed the Arts Council form to make me prove it.
And I hope, I really hope, they believe it too.
The Disclaimer. And the Invitation.
I am not the Arts Council. I am not a funding advisor. I am a writer from West Cork who spent the best part of two+ weeks inside this process and felt a civic and moral duty to report back.
Always read the actual guidelines. Follow the Arts Council’s own instructions. This series is based on my experience and my experience alone.
But also. Read this series. Share it with every writer you know who is thinking about applying. Because the information is freely available and the process is survivable and the funding is real and your work deserves to exist in the world.
Have you ever applied for arts funding? Are you thinking about it? I would love to hear from you in the comments.
And if you missed Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, scroll back. There is much more where this came from.
Check out my Substack for more:
https://wordmattersglobal.substack.com/
(c) Niamh Cooper
