New £1.2m funding opportunity for local community groups
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The Ideas Fund has announced today (Wednesday) it will be opening its next round of grant funding to support up to seven new partnerships in the Highlands and Islands.
The fund will focus on ideas related to mental wellbeing, with £1.2 million funding to support community initiatives in four geographical areas of the UK: Highlands and Islands, North West, Northern Ireland, and Oldham and Hull.
The Ideas Fund is a grants scheme, run by the British Science Association (BSA) and funded by the Wellcome Trust, that enables the UK public to develop and try out ideas that address problems related to mental wellbeing through collaborating with professional researchers.
For this latest round of funding, the BSA have changed the application process based on the feedback and learning they received from organisations who applied in 2021, the pilot year.
This revised application process should reduce the time applicants need to spend on their submission. By providing more in-depth support to shortlisted proposals, the BSA hope to help applicants with innovative ideas to realise their visions.
The expression of interest for submissions will open from Wednesday, April 27, and the application deadline is midday on Wednesday, June 8, for both community groups and researchers. The BSA are particularly interested in applications from those who are keen to work in partnership to develop the project collaboratively.
To support applications a document has been created to provide more detailed information www.theideasfund.org
In 2021, The Ideas Fund awarded 49 grants, totalling £1.8m, to its first projects, connecting communities with researchers to work together on mental wellbeing projects.
Two local art centres – Lyth Arts Centre and North Lands Creative – were among 15 projects in the Highlands and Islands to receive a share of £562.935 in funding.
Lewis Hou, the Ideas Fund development coordinator for the Highlands and Islands and director of Science Ceilidh said: "I'm really excited to see the next round of the Ideas Fund open to groups in the Highlands and Islands again.
"The first round has supported some really exciting work supporting mental wellbeing and has built a strong community of practice across projects with both communities and researchers.
"We look forward to taking this learning to the next round and welcome new groups to build on this even further. If you want to work with a researcher to explore mental wellbeing in your community, even if you've never done that before, do get in touch."
A series of webinars will be held to give more information about the fund and the submission process for organisations that are interested in applying for this next round of funding.
The first online session will take place on Zoom on May 4, from 2.30pm to 3.30pm, with another on Thursday, May 12, from 10.30am to 11.30am. A question and answer webinar will take place on Wednesday, May 18, at 3pm.
A link for the sessions can be found on the Ideas Fund website.
Local sessions will also be held online – please email the development coordinator for further details: lewis@scienceceilidh.com
