New Fund to support community engagement
A unique opportunity to work with communities to explore mental wellbeing in Oldham.
The British Science Association (BSA) and the Wellcome Trust have launched The Ideas Fund – a new grants programme to enable people in the UK to develop and evaluate local projects that aim to help to improve mental wellbeing. The Fund is designed to help people tackle issues that matter to them by connecting them with researchers who can help bring their ideas to life. Initially the Fund is focusing on mental wellbeing, with £3.29m funding to support community initiatives in four UK locations including Oldham in Greater Manchester.
The Fund is prioritising support for people who may not have had the opportunities to play an active role in research before, including people in rural locations, people from minority ethnic communities, and young, marginalised people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged.
Vocal is working in partnership with the BSA to help researchers and community groups to create partnerships and develop ideas for the Fund.
Are you a researcher or support researchers in their work?
We are interested in hearing from researchers from a wide range of disciplines. You don’t have to specialise in mental health, but your area of work needs to be linked to mental wellbeing (e.g. psychology, physical health, nutrition etc).
Whether you already have an idea, connections with community groups in Oldham, need some help forming a partnership or even if you want to find out if your research area fits the Fund, please get in touch with us.
If you want to know more about the Fund:
1. Visit The Ideas Fund website: https://theideasfund.org
2. Attend the pre-application workshops, the first one is on the 18th of February at 2pm.
3. Get in touch with us here.
Posted on behalf of Paolo Arru (he/him), Project Manager, Vocal (formerly called the Public Programmes team)