Grants database

Local Trust aims to enable residents to make their communities and their areas better places in which to live. The grant will research and stakeholder consultation exploring the case for a Community Wealth Fund. The Fund will be an endowment to support communities experiencing disadvantage in England. Investment would come from new dormant assets and corporates issuing a small proportion of new share capital.

Baraka Community Association is a long standing local community group in North Kensington working with Somali and East African groups. This programme will focus on supporting children in the community affected by the Grenfell Tower fire by organising day trips, short family breaks as well as mentoring and youth activities.

This grant will support Cathy Long and Phil Murphy to scope and develop an app or online resource to help residents of high-rise or social housing to better understand home fire safety issues and conduct their own fire safety checks.

A university lecturer with experience in financial inclusion, Lynette Nabbosa will develop a mobile application that enables social housing providers to provide tailored support, guidance and reminders for disadvantaged/​vulnerable individuals who are living independently for the first time.

Dr George Julian has participated in inquests into the deaths of learning disabled people whilst in NHS care, and supported the bereaved families as a family representative and advocate in investigation processes. Through this grant, she will investigate whether there is an appetite, and business model, to support her work around open justice in the coronial system. She will map relevant stakeholders and seek to identify the unmet needs of bereaved families and legal professionals.

Jess Herman, a Sexual Health Educator and professional circus artist, is researching and devising ​‘The Sexual Health Circus’, a new ​‘circus in education’ show. Working with a team of four circus artists and a circus director, they will explore combining circus skills and elements of forum theatre to develop an interactive show to engage young people in learning about sexual health and healthy relationships.

Access Hospitality aims to support adults with learning disabilities to gain fulfilling employment in the hospitality sector. This grant will support the organisation to develop a framework built around the use of assistive technology that includes accredited training, workplace adaptation and support for employees and employers.

Antonio Melechi is concerned by the constraints experienced by non-university researchers and the limited support that universities extend to community researchers. The Community Scholar Project (CSP) aims to build a UK network of non-university researchers by improving and extending access to academic library resources.

Steven McIntyre plans to bring together LGBT+ people in various locations across the UK, encouraging them to be themselves, make a real difference in their local communities and create a more inclusive society for everyone. He aims to create a powerful LGBT+ network of volunteers who will offer their time, skills and experience to local organisations and groups. They will act as role models, build relationships, break down barriers and positively change perceptions of LGBT+ people across the UK.

Zoë Ross will prototype the use of Virtual Reality (VR) and work with schools to provide early-intervention support to children aged 7–12 experiencing mental health issues. This will place animated animal characters in VR environments to offer a fun, interactive and engaging means of early-intervention to children showing signs of mental health issues, who do not meet the threshold for NHS treatment. The prototype will be co-designed with schools, then trialled and tested, with a full evaluation of its impact at the end of the testing phase.

Samuel Bennett is developing and launching a social recovery support network app, Meet4aACoffee. It will be a free to download and use, allowing people recovering from addiction to connect locally to each other wherever they are in the world, and whenever they need. The app will also connect its users to a broad range of local support services and resources, such as the NHS, alcohol recovery programmes, counsellors and even coffee shops.

Naomi Fisher and Lisa Walke want to facilitate children’s freedom to roam with a healthy degree of risk in natural environments. They believe that this experience is an essential part of childhood, and want to explore ways to overcome the barriers and blame culture that can prevent free play in many communities. Funding will support them to develop and pilot the idea.