Ah.... it is this weird sense of peace, nervousness, and trepidation when a grant application is finally submitted and out of my mind.
When you are preparing a grant application, it sort of lives in your head for quite a long period of time. It is mostly what you are thinking about, how to write up the responses to the strange questions within a very tight word limit, how to present yourself and the project that you putting forward, how to navigate the requests for support letters and recommendations, and how to negotiate the awkwardness of asking for either in-kind or financial support for your project.
It is a living nightmare, but it is something that is sadly necessary for larger projects to get off the ground. Cultural organisations are always running close to the bone... especially start-up ones, and unlike some other forms of music, we don't have the gigantic investment and slick marketing machines that are treat the industry like a big money spinner that has music as an accidental by-product.
So, like indie-bands, we have to grow slowly from the grassroots... which means slow and steady growth, with the occasional lucky boost of a donation or grant.
And to get those lucky breaks... well, you have to go through the ordeal of putting your best ideas forward for judgement... and to be prepared to be knocked back.
So, there is a great sense of peace... at long last, I can stop thinking about this proposed project... it was a larger education project, a scaled up version of an education project that we hope to run anyway, but with some grant funding, we could involve more students. An accelerant rather than a lifeline.
The nervousness... have you included everything, have you struck the right balance of promoting your project without being a complete pretentious arsehole? Have you remembered to include all the documents, and did you leave anything out of the budget... are the budget numbers right? Is there something critical that you missed that might just sink the application in the vetting phase?
Despite the fact that there is essentially nothing that I can do now, the proposal is in and the cutoff date has just passed... well, you can't help but to have that nagging feeling. But done is done...
Then there is the trepidation... sure, I know how to lead the music side of things... that is no problem, and I know that I can put together a largish project, we have proven both those things in the past many times. Still, if the application succeeds, you are suddenly responsible for a large amount of money that needs to properly spent and accounted for. Plus... there is the nagging thought that this is the time when things go belly up...
There are almost times when I'm hoping that the application WON'T succeed... so that we can just go back to the core of doing what we were doing... slow and steady growth. But then I think, we really can make a big difference if we are given that little boost and accelerate our education/performance timeline.
Already, I am amazed at what we have done within a single year... it has been a year on afterburners... and I think that others are also quite interested by the sudden splash that made in our little pool. I only hope that we can turn that little splash into a sustainable tidal wave!
... but for the moment, the grant is done. I can get back to thinking about and playing music again!
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