Hackney is on track to receive the highest number of Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grants for the eighth year running — but theatre practitioners in the borough are still struggling for funding.
The latest data from Arts Council England (ACE), the national development agency for creativity and culture, showed Hackney applicants have received 23 individual Project Grants in Q1 and Q2, ahead of Tower Hamlets and Lambeth with 22 and 19 respectively.
Hackney has consistently received the highest number of individual Project Grants since data was recorded in 2018, and in the 2024/25 financial year, the borough received £2.7 million in funding — the second highest in London.
Across the artistic disciplines, theatre receives the most grants, but despite this vital support from ACE, thespians in Hackney are still unable to consistently fund their projects.
Theatre practitioner, Olly Hawes, who runs a storytelling company called Take Stock Exchange alongside his solo projects, said: “It’s not a financially viable pursuit.
“I have a separate business, I work as a tutor, and that’s how I earn my regular money.”
Hawes, 39, resides in Tower Hamlets, but lived in Hackney for years, and received ACE funding in September for his one-man-show, Old Fat F**k Up, currently playing at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.
Although Hawes has previously received grants for Take Stock Exchange community projects, he contacted ACE to get advice on his solo application and claims they told him to ask for ‘as little amount of money as possible’.
He said: “Essentially the project is funded by the Arts Council, but it’s also funded by me making a decision that I really want to be an artist.”
The demand for ACE funding is high — in 2024/25 there were 7,896 eligible applications for the £30,000 and below strand, and just 2,154 of those were successful.
For this project, Hawes wanted to invest in hiring other people to bring their expertise to the show, but that ultimately meant he wasn’t paying himself.
He said: “My wife and I accepted that we’re not earning as much money as I possibly can for the family, but we decided that it’s a good thing for the kids to see their mum and dad trying to be both — not only working just for money, but creatively fulfilled in some way, so we try and make it work.”
Andrew Whyment, director and CEO of Hackney theatre company, Squint, applied for ACE funding in 2023 to support their Squint Playwriting Award, which gives early career writers from low income backgrounds the opportunity to be paid to develop their writing.
Whyment applied to ACE three times before the application was accepted, and when he wanted to re-run the award this year, it took four attempts to get the funding, despite having evidence of its previous success.
Whyment, who owns a flat in Hackney, said: “It grinds you down. We were almost ready to push the eject button and go, I’m not sure if we’re going to get any money out of the Arts Council.
“And then all of a sudden they gave us everything we needed.”
He added: “I don’t know how we would get close to our £50-60,000 budget, if we didn’t know there was going to be at least £30,000 of that was going to be fulfilled by the Arts Council.
“It’s always the first part of the equation for us.”
Whyment hopes Squint can lean more on private avenues to assist with funding as the ACE resubmission process could hold them back from offering the playwriting award on a regular basis.
Artists’ heavy reliance on ACE became clear this summer when the online portal, Grantium, which is used to submit and manage funding applications, went down in July and only re-opened for applications in late September.
Emilia Teglia is Artistic Director of Hackney-based theatre company, Odd Eyes Theatre, who work regularly with schools on a creative debate project, which they offer for free to remove barriers to participation.
Teglia said the programme was at least half funded by ACE, but after the Grantium system went down, they had to cancel or postpone sessions due to lack of funding.
This also impacted Odd Eyes Theatre’s personnel, as they couldn’t afford to pay their participation manager and were forced to terminate their contract.
Teglia said: “It’s triggered a cycle of problems and consequences.”
Odd Eyes Theatre regularly apply for ACE Project Grants and, since the pandemic, receive two bulks of funding on average every year, making up about 60% of the company’s total income.
The remainder often comes from private avenues or commissions, such as a project they did for the NHS of development workshops around creativity.
Teglia said: “Arts Council income is irreplaceable.”
Adding: “It’s also got the name attached to it, if we go to other funding and we can say: ‘Look, we got this support from Arts Council’, we’re more likely to get support.”
Of the 7,006 individual National Lottery Project Grants given to London applicants between April 2018 and September 2025, Hackney received 11%.
A spokesperson for ACE said: “Hackney is a high concentration of cultural organisations, individual artists, grassroots music venues, and carnival groups, many of which rely on Project Grants to deliver their work.”
The data reflects the registered address of applicants, not necessarily where the funded activity took place, as in the case of Hawes, whose one-man-show is in Hammersmith.
The spokesperson said: “While Hackney appears as the recipient, the impact often reaches far beyond the borough itself.”
As a resident of Hackney, Whyment had his own theory: “When you walk out my front door, you see a council estate where support is needed to make sure that artists are being supported in their endeavours, and there’s still a huge inequity and need there.
“But then you walk in the other direction and you see more people like me who are living their middle class creative lives, and their company addresses are based in the borough, and they’re buying their flat whites while they write their Arts Council applications.
“I think it probably is that combination that makes it a place that has both a lot of artistic project leaders like me, plus a demographic where there is a lot of need.”
Teglia, who found herself homeless in the late-90s, built a community in Hackney and recalled how the borough historically has had a strong artistic draw.
Due to the gentrification of the area, she has since been pressed out and now resides in the more affordable Enfield.
For Hawes, even with ACE funding for Old Fat F**k Up, which explores the financial pressures of being an artist, it’s not a sustainable pursuit.
Hawes said: “I would love to keep making art, but I’m not sure I can afford to.”
Featured image credit: Squint Theatre Company
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