Today we are delighted to announce that we’ve opened applications to The Community Creative Tech Fund, in partnership with the Creative Community Hubs project (closing 13th April), for capital projects up to £50k. We will be running a series of events over the coming weeks to support potential applicants. We also still have our Creative Informatics Participants and Alumni Creative Tech Fund call open for applications (closing 10th March). Across both calls we are looking for inclusive projects that will make a real difference to diverse communities and enable new and more inclusive opportunities for creative innovation in Edinburgh and South East Scotland.
Thanks to additional funding by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (part of UK Research & Innovation), we’re able to support investment in capital projects (buildings and/or rent, facilities, technology, equipment, software and maintenance, etc.) which further the equality, diversity, and inclusion impact of creative data driven innovation in our region. For the Community Creative Tech Fund, in partnership with the Creative Community Hubs project, we are looking for ambitious proposals and have £110k total funding available to support projects ranging from £5k to £50k. The call is open to community organisations across Edinburgh and South East Scotland (Edinburgh, Lothians, Borders, Fife), and we are particularly keen to see applications from organisations based in and working with communities in less well represented and less privileged communities.
Workshops for the Community Creative Tech Fund will be taking place on:
- Tuesday 21st March 2023 – Craigmillar Now, 2pm-4pm (TBC) – Booking link will follow
- Thursday 23rd March 2023, 2pm-4pm at Duncan Place, Leith – Book your place here.
- Thursday 6th April 2023, 10am – 12pm at The Crannie / Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust – Book your place here.
We are hugely excited to be able to offer this additional funding as it allows us to support a wider range of organisations and audiences, and to find new ways to support our equality, diversity and inclusion ambitions (see our EDI policy and action plan for more details). We have recently been undertaking some further research on this aspect of our work so look out for forthcoming research blog posts around some of the challenges and reflections on supporting more diverse and inclusive creative innovation.
The new funding call announced today is one of three inclusive capital calls we will be running this spring. A third call will support professional accommodation (e.g. hotdesking spaces), again with specific equality, diversity and inclusion impacts. The two calls open now are:
The Creative Informatics Participants and Alumni Creative Tech Fund is a fund to enable small scale (max £5k) capital investments in people and projects previously supported by Creative Informatics to increase the impact and ongoing legacy of their creative data driven work.
The Community Creative Tech Fund, in partnership with the Creative Community Hubs project is a fund to enable significant (£5k – £50k) capital investments in projects and communities that enable innovative creative activities, projects and entrepreneurship with data and data driven technologies.
