Communities and Culture Network+: Pilot Project Funding Call

Closing date: 16:00 on 30 November 2012
Issue Date: 13 Nov 2012
Call Status: Current
Category: Invitation for proposals
Related theme: Digital economy


Applicants are invited to apply for short-term discrete pilot projects of up to six months’ duration from the RCUK Digital Economy Theme (DE) Communities and Culture Network+.

These projects will start no later than February 2013 and are for activities which develop from and speak to issues from four scoping areas.
Background - Digital Economy

"The Research Councils UK Digital Economy Theme is supporting research to rapidly realise the transformational impact of digital technologies on aspects of community life, cultural experiences, future society and the economy.
To achieve this we bring together a unique community of researchers (from diverse disciplines including social science, engineering, computer science, the arts and medical research) and users (people, business, government) to study, understand and find solutions to real problems"

The DE Theme has formed four ’challenge areas’ to describe the research we support: Communities and Culture; Sustainable Society; IT as a Utility; New Economic Models. This call focuses on Communities and Culture.
Background - DE Community & Cultures Network+

The Communities and Culture strand of the Digital Economy theme (June 2012-15) investigates the digital transformations of communities and culture. We directly address the actual, claimed and potential impact of mobile and digital technologies on everyday life, citizenship, culture and community. Funded by the RCUK and led by the EPSRC, the £1.5m network+ is one of four challenge areas (others are Sustainable Society, IT as Utility, and New Economic Models) that have been developed for two key purposes. The first is to consolidate and extend existing research in these areas, by bringing together cross-disciplinary and cross research council projects and researchers in order to identify future Grand Challenges for the Digital Economy. The second rationale is to respond to and direct technological innovation and change within and across the four sectors identified above.

The projects aim to:

• Investigate or develop a key issue, idea, or cultural practice through empirical and conceptual work.
• Involve and/or work with communities either through direct engagement and/or through community and/or sector facing events and activities.
• Enable the exploration of ideas or materials that could lead to further projects, develop the knowledge base and research of the Network+ in productive and insightful ways enabling future work, and impact into communities and contexts beyond their initial scope.
• Identify key challenges and areas for the future, develop relations across academia, industry and policy and explore international relations where appropriate.