David Snowdon Trust

The David Snowdon Trust is a charitable grantmaker with a mission to improve lives through enduring social impact in rural Cumbria, addressing social disadvantage, widening educational opportunity, and fostering cultural enrichment via community self-help, innovation, and long-term sustainability. Guided by values of rural empowerment, equitable access, and measurable outcomes, it drives funding decisions prioritizing sustainable social mobility, educational attainment, and artistic development, believing change arises from innovative, locally-led interventions that build self-reliance and lasting community resilience among under-served groups.

It supports higher education initiatives including apprenticeship schemes and learning programs exposing young people and students to hospitality training, skills development, and employability pathways tackling youth unemployment and barriers to attainment; social needs projects alleviating rural poverty, boosting social mobility for low-income families through targeted interventions addressing food insecurity, isolation, and economic hardship in remote communities; and arts programs nurturing early-career talent via creative arts training, sponsorships, outreach schemes, and equipment for artistic development across genres like music, visual arts, and performance. Funded activities emphasize innovative educational programmes, capital resources for training equipment, peer mentoring, community-led apprenticeships, and arts exposure enhancing confidence, creativity, and cultural participation for disadvantaged youth, rural families, and aspiring artists facing access barriers.

Exclusions encompass building projects, revenue-only requests lacking sustainability, and national charities without direct Cumbrian beneficiaries, prioritizing instead deeply local organizations serving rural communities in Barrow, Eden, and South Lakeland. Distinctive for its tight regional focus on Westmorland and Furness, blend of education-social-arts support, preference for grassroots innovation over generic aid, and outcomes-driven philosophy valuing community-embedded charities delivering preventative mobility gains, educational equity, and cultural vitality for young people, low-income rural families, and early-career artists.