29.01.2025 Inspiring Elephant Community Fund returns for a fourth year with a £50,000 boost for local initiatives
The Elephant and Castle Town Centre team and Get Living are delighted to announce that the Inspiring Elephant Community Fund is again open for applications, building on a successful three funding rounds to date.
The fund provides £50,000 a year in grants to local groups and organisations, contributing to short-term projects as well as longer-term, ongoing community initiatives in the local area.
Since 2022, the Inspiring Elephant Community Fund has awarded £150,000 to 39 community projects to support residents through arts activities, wellness sessions, training opportunities and more.
This year, in 2025, in addition to the funding on offer, applicants are also invited to apply to run their initiative from the purpose-built Community Hub space on the second floor of Castle Square free of charge, helping to ensure funding can go as far as possible.
Priorities for this year’s grants should focus on one or more of the following key areas:
- Health and wellbeing
- Young people and training
- Communities and sustainability
The Inspiring Elephant Community Fund is just one part of the wide-ranging support the Elephant and Castle Town Centre team and Get Living provide to the local community. To date, this has included £300,000 of donations distributed to local groups, such as Shakespeare’s Globe, the Prince’s Trust and Evelina London Children’s Hospital through the National Portrait Gallery’s Hospitals Programme. Additionally, the Elephant and Castle Community Hub continues to provide a range of free activities to locals, both online and in-person.
Previous recipients of the fund have shared their stories of how they have used the grants:
Mr Hafeez Khan, Head Teacher at Crampton Primary School said:
“The extended school provision at Crampton is a wealth of meaningful enrichment activities for the pupils of the school. These activities include chess, yoga, art in nature as well as sport. Children have the opportunity of building on existing experiences and skills or trying something completely new for the very first time. This enrichment complements and adds to the existing curriculum offer and for that I’d like to take the opportunity to thank you for the grant provided which enables this to happen.”
Andrea Sinclair and Cecilia Wasrburm, Managers of Art in the Park said:
“Art in the Park has loved working at the Elephant and Castle Community Hub. Our after-school club has been well attended with people dropping in from Castle Square, Charlotte Sharman school and lots of other places. The hub is a really fantastic space to work in – it’s central, comfortable and enjoyed by all. Our next workshops are on January 31st and February 7th from 3.30-5pm at Elephant and Castle Community Hub, and all children and their families are welcome.”
Applications for the Inspiring Elephant Community Fund must be submitted by 5pm on Thursday March 27th, so if you know someone who runs a local community initiative which would benefit from funding, please do encourage them to apply!
Diana Barranco, Community Director at Elephant and Castle Town Centre said: “It has been incredible to see the vast range of local initiatives supported by the fund, and we are incredibly proud to re-launch the Inspiring Elephant Community Fund for the fourth year running. We can’t wait to see the exciting range of impactful projects represented in this year’s applications, demonstrating all the incredible work currently going on throughout Elephant and Castle to support the local community.”
Applicants can apply for funding using the link here.
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