Grants
As well as offering a wide-ranging programme of land-based learning for children and young people, the Ernest Cook Trust gives grants to registered charities, schools and not-for-profit organisations wishing to encourage young people’s interest either in the countryside and the environment or the arts (in the broadest sense) or aiming to raise levels of literacy and numeracy.
Since the ECT is a land-based Trust, work which encourages or ensures the continuation of rural skills and crafts is of particular interest to the Trustees. All applications are expected to link in with either the National Curriculum or with recognised qualifications.
In 2008/09, the ECT Trustees gave £1.7m to support over 450 educational projects. Click here to download a list showing a selection of recent grant recipients.
A large grants programme for awards of over £4,000 and a small grants programme for awards of under £4,000 operate throughout the year.
Latest grants news
Exploring environmental issues
Jose Phillips 
has settled into her new role as the Trust’s Grants Administrator. Here she looks at how recent ECT grants are helping children understand environmental issues:
"With the environment and climate change increasingly dominating the headlines, it is good to note the number of recent ECT grant recipients investing in environmental education projects.
"These often innovative projects fit in well with ECT’s ethos of conservation and ‘Learning from the Land’. They range from providing garden starter kits for London schools, to using music to explore environmental issues with primary school children, to a university summer school on saving energy.
"At Ashwell Pupil Referral Unit in Hull, an ECT grant has funded a weather station to help students with part of their Environmental Studies module. As well as offering students the chance to learn and appreciate the environment, it has encouraged them to work together to gather data and ‘own’ the equipment.
"The Museum Of Garden History in London received a grant for garden starter kits and an ‘art cart’ – a customised traditional estate barrow for gardening and art activities, used in the museum for family learning activities. The grant also helped to equip the education space in the museum with art materials and other equipment. Garden starter kits of gloves, trowels, seeds, seed trays, paper pot makers and bottle top waterers, have been delivered to schools in Lambeth.
"Over the past year over 2,300 children have benefited from a range of activities at Garden Organic in Ryton, Warwickshire, helping them understand the natural world. The ECT grant enabled Garden Organic to provide pots, seeds, compost and growing instructions so that every child could take away a plant to nurture. Training and materials were also provided for children to build ladybird hibernation houses and bird feeders.
"‘Sounds Green’ was an outreach programme run by Manchester Camerata using musical composition and performance to explore environmental issues with children in ten primary schools in less advantaged areas of Bolton and Bury. During the workshops 320 children worked with musicians to explore environmental issues.
"And Sprowston Junior School in Norwich is one of a small but growing number of applications coming in for support for purchasing chickens and chicken runs. This school received its ECT grant in July 2008 and bought six ex-battery hens from an animal sanctuary.
"The chickens have thrived in their new environment and the eggs are used in the kitchen or sold to parents. Spending time with the chickens has also had a calming effect on the children.
"Meanwhile, 20 young boys of African and Caribbean and mixed heritage backgrounds from the London area attended a one-week summer school at Brunel University run by the charity Generating Genius, with the theme Saving Energy, Preserving our Environment, and connecting the sciences and the arts."