The Agency Awarded £1.28m by The National Lottery Community Fund

The Agency, the joint pioneering project supporting young changemakers has been awarded £1.28m by The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK.

This joint creative entrepreneurship programme, now in its 9th year, enables 15-25 year-olds from some of the most underrepresented areas in the UK to take the lead in creating creative social change projects based on the needs they identify in their own communities. Over the next five years this grant will continue supporting socially-conscious entrepreneurs in London and Manchester and enable The Agency to develop and expand its reach. With this funding, an additional 580 new young people will be recruited from underrepresented areas across England, with funding for 87 youth-led social change projects in these communities.

The Agency is a creative youth enterprise project working with young people from underrepresented areas to pitch ideas to a panel of experts. These ideas are specifically for developing and creating social enterprises, events, projects and businesses that will have a positive impact on their local communities. Successful applicants are provided with professional training, support and advice needed to develop their projects along with a £2000 seed fund to help launch their projects. Ideas can be anything that will benefit the young people's local community - from boxing workshops to community kitchens and music festivals.

Rachel Stephens, Head of Partnerships, The National Lottery Community Fund: "Thanks to National Lottery players, we are able to support innovative projects, like The Agency, to help empower young people and give them the opportunity to realise their potential. We look forward to seeing the positive impact these young entrepreneurs will make in their local communities thanks to the training and skills support they'll receive through our funding."

Over the past eight years, The Agency projects directly engaged almost 23,000 community participants and audiences. In total, 355 young people across the UK have gone through The Agency methodology, with 104 Agents going on to lead 60 social enterprise projects in Manchester, London, Cardiff and Belfast. 46 of these projects are still running today, with many Agents leading COVID-response activity in their communities over the past year. The Agents have additionally raised £131,547 to develop their projects, significantly more than the £90,000 initial seed funding offered in total by The Agency. Today's much needed investment from The National Lottery Community Fund underscores the phenomenal achievements of the Agents to date who have already been through the programme, especially their capacity for creativity, insight, and innovation.

Suzie Henderson, Head of Creative Programmes at Contact, says:
"The Agency has always been a vital project but in the wake of a pandemic that has laid bare the inequalities within our society it has become more urgent that ever before. We are incredibly grateful to The National Lottery Community Fund for the funding that will continue to support the work of The Agency not only in Manchester and London but its continued growth in communities across the country."

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, The Agency 2020 programme was ongoing in Manchester, London (Battersea and Brent), Cardiff and Belfast. All five projects were quickly adapted to be delivered online, to guarantee support and continuity for the young people on the programme. Online sessions were also opened to Agency alumni, as it became clear that programme graduates would likely need support during this time. A series of national zoom events were hosted to bring young Agents from across the UK together.

Digital poverty is experienced by many of the young people The Agency works with, so it quickly worked to source funding and support to provide IT equipment and data to enable young people to get online and access education, work and carry on with their own Agency projects. During the pandemic the Agency has emerged as an expert in its field; young people from the programme have become a go to source for an authentic, authoritative voice on the challenges facing young people and underserved communities. Even though Agents had to modify their projects because of Covid, with The Agency itself impacted by it, it was still able to accomplish its main purpose- which is to have a social impact on the following generations.

Liz Moreton, Director of Creativity and Social Change at Battersea Arts Centre, says:
"The Agency puts young people who have been hardest hit by pandemic in the driving seat of leading a more inclusive and fair recovery for us all. The Agency recognises young people, who are often seen as the problem or the ones needing our help, as the ones who have the greatest capacity for experimentation and innovation and who, with our support, can meet the challenges we currently face with new, brave and creative ideas. We are incredibly grateful to The National Lottery Community Fund for supporting The Agency to work together with more partners and communities from across the country to address the issues which matter to them most and devise practical solutions for change."

Looking at the future and further encouraged by this renewal in funding, plans are in place to significantly expand The Agency programme to 6 new areas of critical need across England over the next 5 years and, subject to funding, continue The Agency in Belfast, Cardiff and Brent. The Agency plans to establish a network of organisations to create a powerful movement of inspirational young people to connect with each other and share knowledge and experience, and who can lobby nationally for change and inspire other young people to do the same. This will comprise a centralised marketing, PR and national advocacy campaign for The Agency; an annual 'National Gathering' of young people from across all Agency territories; and a youth steering committee.

This committee will be made up of young people who have been through the programme. The steering committee will have a governance role and will meet quarterly to make key decision about the future of the programme. They will also plan and deliver the annual 'National Gatherings': shaping the events, selecting speakers and topics, and ensuring they are discussing and acting upon issues that are most pertinent to the agents and their communities.

The long -term ambition for the Agency is for it to become its own organisation led by its own alumni. The youth steering committee is part of the process of training the young people up to take on this leadership role. Previous Agents are also employed across the programme as facilitators, project co-ordinators, building up to project managers.

During the pandemic, many of The Agency's alumni have emerged as experts in their fields, quickly becoming go-to sources for authentic and authoritative voices on the challenging's facing young people and underserved communities. Some examples include: Henrietta Imoreh, who sits on Esmee Fairbairn's Care Leavers advisory panel and presented at its new strategy launch. Henrietta also sits on the Board of Trustees for Agenda - an alliance for women at risk of social exclusion and was a judge for Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Award for Civic Arts Organisations. Dulcie Usher was a panellist on 'We Will Still Breathe', a Black Lives Matter discussion hosted by Battersea Arts Centre. Olivia Lee presented at the Clore Emerging Futures Conference and was a guest on Postcards to the Future, a podcast series from Cultural Reset Programme and led youth consultation sessions with the BBC. Manchester-based Josh Wilkinson presented at the People's Powerhouse Convention 'We are the North' and 'Glitter and Guilds' a Collective and Sustainable membership-led structures symposium. Josh sits on Contact's board, along with Faidat Ope. Agents Josh Wilkinson, Samuel Remi-Akinwale and Faidat Ope also presented at In Place of War, a Change Makers Summit in 2020.

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