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Children’s agency Pop Up Projects to close after 'string of declined funding bids'
Non-profit children’s literature agency, Pop Up Projects, has announced it will close after 14 years following “a string of declined funding bids and few prospects of investment in the near future.”
The agency said it had instructed liquidators to assist with placing the company into creditors’ voluntary liquidations, following the failed attempts to obtain funding.
Pop Up’s founder-director, Dylan Calder, has stepped down but will continue to serve the company as a volunteer board member until the company’s proposed liquidation has been agreed and formalised.
The agency’s Pathways Into Children’s Publishing programmes secured almost £1m in public funding, publisher sponsorships and university affiliations to invest in creatives from under-represented communities, and the agency also ran a reading for pleasure programme.
Since 2011, Pop Up raised and invested £6m in children’s literature experiences and opportunities, providing regular earning as well as creative and professional development opportunities for hundreds of writers and illustrators at all stages in their careers.
Calder will oversee an exhibition of work from recent Pathways illustration graduates at this year’s The London Book Fair. Due to the imminent proposal to close Pop Up, Pathways illustrators are collaborating to raise £6,850 to fund the design, print and installation costs of The London Book Fair exhibition. The London Book Fair is sponsoring this exhibition, and the group is looking for other co-sponsors, supporters and small donors.
Information on how to donate can be found here.
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Calder said: “While we’re immensely saddened by the forthcoming closure of Pop Up Projects, after two years of struggling to survive, I’m immensely proud of the impact we’ve had on children’s literature in this country. Children’s literature organisations underpin the children’s publishing industry – by supporting authors’ livelihoods, investing in talent, championing equality, innovating around how literature is made and shared, engaging communities and building audiences.
“Pop Up’s demise should be a red flag to anyone in the sector who is passionate about the whole literary ecosystem, and the work that’s done outside publishing business models to empower and enable diverse people from all walks of life to both access and create children’s books. The enormous steps we’ve taken to advance equality and representation in children’s books through Pathways must not end with Pop Up’s closure – and I hope in the coming weeks and months to continue to engage the publishers who sponsored Pathways, to build on what we started. Including by supporting our launch of over 30 debut illustrators at The London Book Fair this March.”
At the time of making the decision to proceed with the closure, Pop Up was poised to launch “major” funding bids to support a three-strand Pathways – one each for aspiring illustrators, writers and publishers – based in the North West. In his part-time role as lecturer in publishing, Calder is now exploring potential for a new home for Pathways with Manchester Metropolitan University.
Pop Up lost its Arts Council England (ACE) National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) status in 2023, and the organisation has struggled to replace this lost income from other sources, it says, adding that Pop Up’s grant application success rate declined from around 80% in 2020 to 15% in 2024, “reflective of a widespread decline in access to and high competition for public and private funding across the cultural sector”.
Pop Up’s announcement comes a month after The Good Literary Agency also announced closure.
