The National Lottery Community Fund: The Emerging Futures Fund

Archived Advice services Age Aged 26 - 59 years Aged 60+ Arts, culture and heritage Black and minority ethnic Children (0-12) Communities Community and neighbourhood development Community development Community safety and crime prevention COVID-19/Coronavirus Cross community Dependants and carers Education and learning Faith and religion Family and parenting good relations Health promotion Health, wellbeing and sport Healthcare services Information Technology Medical conditions Medical research Multiculturalism Peace and reconciliation People with disabilities social enterprise Social partnership Voluntary and community infrastructure volunteering Young people (13-25) Antrim & Newtownabbey Ards & North Down Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon Belfast City Causeway Coast and Glens Derry City and Strabane England Fermanagh and Omagh Great Britain Lisburn and Castlereagh Mid and East Antrim Mid Ulster Newry, Mourne and Down Northern Ireland Scotland Wales Medium (up to £60,000) Micro (up to £1,000) Small (up to £10,000)

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Overview

The pandemic has caused a great deal of hardship,  and presented new challenges to communities across the UK. It has also created space for changes and new ways of doing things that we might not have thought of before.   

So TNL Community Fund would like to support communities to consider how they can start the transition from the immediate crisis, towards recovery and renewal.

They want to invest in the creativity of civil society and help amplify the voices of communities through stories, narratives and public imagination projects that can lead to new ideas, questions and visions of the future. They value the power of storytelling and know that people and communities are able to use stories and narratives to talk about ideas for the future and how to get there, as well as practical ways that can help us move toward recovery and renewal.

Support to shape the future 

To help communities shape the future, they’d like to give you funding to explore questions, use stories and create narratives about what your community has learned in how it’s responded to the challenges of COVID-19, and reflect on what else your community might want for the future. For example, this could be about looking at new ways of working or kinds of relationships that communities have set up through their crisis response.   

They want communities to explore  

what they want to keep doing because it’s been working well  
what they want to leave behind as they start thinking about moving into recovery and renewal 
any new ideas that will help when it comes to rebuilding and renewal.

They also want communities to help shape what should be done next  

By giving you this funding to ask these questions now, you’ll be helping shape what needs to be done next to support communities. They know that more investment will be needed in the long-term. But these grants offer a way for communities to have informed what that looks like.   

Types of work funded:   

 1. Exploring new narratives, perspectives and community storytelling  

 In a story something happens to someone or something. Stories usually also have a beginning, middle and end. Narratives hold together collections of related stories.    

It’s possible to use stories and narratives to create changes in society. This is because they shape the way we think about, feel and connect with other people. People and communities can use stories to talk about their ideas for the future and how to get there.

2. Community foresight and public imagination     

Sometimes it can be difficult to stop thinking about the present. This can make it harder for communities to shape how things will look in the future, or think about possibilities we haven’t imagined before.    

To successfully design for a future, it can help to have a picture of that future – and people trained in community foresight and public imagination can help to do that.

3. Investing in strong signals of transformation    

They want to fund projects that:    

can show practical ways about where we go from here   
need resource to develop their idea so that when the time is right the idea is more likely to be adopted
can show us why they think the time is right for their idea 
can show us how they’ve responded to different challenges - like different patterns of work, community togetherness and the valuing of relationships.

Track grant Notes