Future News Pilot Fund - Apply by 8th Dec

The Future News Pilot Fund proposed as part of the Cairncross Review is now open for applications. It offers project funding of between £20,000 and £100,000, and applications must be received by 23:59 on 8th December 2019. (I’m posting this at Josef Davies-Coates’ suggestion.)

The full call for ideas, including details of eligibility criteria (in short, any UK-registered organisation with a demonstrable commitment to public interest journalism/news) and FAQs, is available at:
https://www.nesta.org.uk/project/future-news-fund/call-ideas/

Please do take a look, and spread the word, and if you have any further questions after reading the FAQs, please do consider signing up for the webinars on 14th and 26th November.

Best of luck!

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I put together an application for the FNF but didn’t get through to the next round and the meetings in January. I’m very sceptical about the way Nesta selects who they want to work with, and this was a terrible process to follow when applying. There was no needs analysis required, so my worry is that the fund will go to already established organisations and any community-based groups won’t get a look in.

If anyone has any information or news about who is going through to the next round, it would be great to find out more about which organisations are involved.

Rob

Hi Rob - I’d encourage you (and other applicants) to send any feedback on the past process and suggestions for any future processes (if you haven’t already) to the Nesta team, details here.

If you didn’t see the announcement of the grantees last month, it’s here.

Thanks @macroscope , will do. It’s a very unsatisfactory project, and there is an exclusion for training-based community media projects, again. So lots to feed back on.

Rob

The Nesta podcast on the Bristol Cable mentions the support that was given by the Future News Fund. I’m sceptical of Nesta’s approach, as they seem a clique of insiders who control access in a very top-down way, but I might be mistaken.

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