The Learning Through Making fund supports UK-based visual art organisations to bring opportunities for making into their work in art education.

Making matters. Working with materials – testing, shaping, experimenting and playing – changes how we think and learn.

Freealands are looking to support exploratory projects that embrace openness, collaboration and iteration. They want to enable organisations to work in an expansive way with materials, unpicking and challenging preconceptions about making and material literacy, interrogating practice and working in an open and collaborative way. This could mean trying out a new idea, developing workshops or events, adding a making-focused strand to existing work, or improving access to materials, facilities, transport or specialist expertise.

They are particularly interested in approaches that challenge assumptions about making, and do not set out predefined outcomes. What becomes possible when we let materials lead?

The Learning Through Making fund will support projects of any length, taking place between 1 January and 31 December 2027 with funding of up to £25,000.