The programme has offered a variety of funding opportunities for individuals and organisations that are looking to do inspiring work with data. Data, in the context of Creative Informatics, can mean lots of things. Data can be: a museum, gallery, or individual’s archive collections; an organisation’s business data – on customers, ticketing, previous projects; licensed or open data sets about the world – for example environmental data, footfall data, geographic or georeferenced data sets; information in texts, videos, or images – perhaps looking at patterns across collections of documents; a data set as used as the basis for creative work – a sewing patterns that visualise bird watching data. Across the programme, we have supported partners to understand what creating innovative data driven work means for them, with funding for projects across a variety of different programmes:
- Creative Bridge: a free course for creative professionals in Edinburgh and the surrounding areas run by CodeBase, which aims to demystify the tech world and its jargon, by sharing the building blocks of digital product development over 10 weeks. 220 Creative Bridge participants have been supported across the lifetime of the project. Read more about the course and alumni from the programme in our Creative Bridge section. You can also hear the stories of past participants in the Creative Bridge podcast.
- Challenge Projects: enable creative and cultural organisations to bring forward challenges relating to their work that require innovative, data-driven solutions. Selected Challenges were advertised across the region to potential Challenge Responders, who then receive up to £20k to undertake research and development in answering the Challenge. We supported 30 of these across the lifetime of the programme. Find out about past projects in our Challenge Projects section.
- Resident Entrepreneurs: funded individuals or small teams that would like to develop a new product or service using data, or data-driven technology. Funding of up to £12k was available to support these projects, as well as mentoring, support from Edinburgh Innovations, peer networking, further resources, and advice. Where possible, Resident Entrepreneurs were paired with host organisations and/or other sources of expertise that support their work, with 72 Resident Entrepreneurs were funded across the lifetime of the project. Read more about past projects and support packages in our Resident Entrepreneurs section.
- Connected Innovators: supported emerging leaders from within the creative industries who want to take time out to conduct research and development that will enable them to advance their own careers and/or business. We provided up to £10k funding as well as support and mentoring for self-defined projects. Connected Innovators was delivered by Creative Edinburgh, with regular meet ups and provision of significant support for applicants and funded projects. We supported 24 Connected Innovators across the lifetime of the project. Read more about past projects and in our Connected Innovators section.
- Creative Horizon Projects: were aimed at interdisciplinary teams of academic and industry partners. Up to £25,000 of funding was available for projects to explore the potential of emerging technologies to create new technical and business opportunities for the creative industries in Edinburgh and Southeast Scotland. Creative Horizon Projects are high risk/high gain in nature, bringing academics and industry together with the aim of breaking new ground and establishing how technology could benefit the creative industries in the future. We supported 5 Creative Horizon projects during the lifetime of the programme. Read more about past projects in our Creative Horizon section.