Baring Foundation to continue its commitment to racial equity across its programmes

The Baring Foundation will be committing a further £3 million in new funding over the next five years to support a focus on racial justice in its grant-making.

This follows an initial £3 million in 2020, which was delivered through our UK (Arts and Strengthening Civil Society) programmes from 2021-2025, and came to an end this year.

This new commitment will again mean an extra £1 million over the next five years for our Arts programme, and an extra £2 million over five years for our Strengthening Civil Society (Use of the Law for Social Change) programme.

2021-2025

The Arts programme, under its current theme of Arts and Mental Health, gave a total of 42 grants (amounting to over £1.7 million) which responded to the under-representation of artists of Global Majority heritage working in creative mental health and the relative lack of creative mental health opportunities in Global Majority communities. We estimate that over 200 artists have benefited from this funding so far.

The Arts programme will be publishing a report in early 2026 highlighting good practice emerging from these grants, to be launched at a conference at Brixton House theatre in London in March.

The Foundation’s trustees decided to direct the share of the funding allocated to the Strengthening Civil Society programme to support civil society organisations to use the law to address racial injustice in the criminal legal system. Since 2021, the programme has given 32 grants (amounting to £1.4 million) to support legal action on a wide range of issues impacting racialised communities, from joint enterprise and stop and search, to modern slavery and the exploitation of migrant workers, to the clampdown on protest over racial justice issues.

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