Wellcome Trust: Engaging Science: People Awards & Society Awards

Overview

Both schemes aim to:

• stimulate interest, excitement and debate about biomedical science and/or the history of medicine
• support formal and informal learning
• reach audiences of all ages and from all walks of life and inform, inspire and involve them
• encourage high-quality interdisciplinary practice and collaborations
• investigate and test new methods of engagement, participation and education.

The schemes are open to a wide range of people, including: mediators, facilitators and practitioners of science communication; science centre/museum staff; artists; educators; film makers; theatre producers; games developers; public participation practitioners; health professionals; and academics in bioscience, social science, bioethics and medical history and humanities.

Project activities and outputs may include:

• workshops, events, debates and discussions
• exhibitions and museum outreach
• films, games, websites and cross-platform projects
• performance or theatre projects involving existing work or work that may be more illustrative than artistic
• deliberative or opinion-gathering projects
• creation of teaching materials
• projects that use the collections of the Wellcome Library and Wellcome Collection at the Science Museum.

To be eligible, you must be based in the UK or the Republic of Ireland and the primary audience engagement must take place in the UK or the Republic of Ireland. Applicants are usually affiliated to organisations, but you can apply as an individual for a People and Society Award.

Projects must be scientifically sound - we look for scientific input either through a scientist taking on an advisory role or through direct collaboration.

People Awards (up to and including £40 000)

People Awards are for innovative and creative projects that engage the public with biomedical science and/or the history of medicine. They can fund small-to-medium-sized one-off projects or projects that pilot new ideas with an aim to scale up or become sustainable following the grant, or they can part-fund larger projects.

Society Awards (above £40 000)

Society Awards can fund the scaling-up of successfully piloted projects (whether funded through People Awards or through other means) or can fund projects that are more ambitious in scale and impact than is possible through a People Award. Society Award projects would normally expect to reach audiences with a wide geographical spread across the UK and/or Republic of Ireland. They can also part-fund larger projects. The average level of a Society Award is around £180,000 over 2-3 years.

Mass-media entertainment projects are not suitable for the People Awards and Society Awards. We have recently revised our Co-production Awards to specifically fund production costs associated with broadcast, games or film mass-media entertainment projects, please see here for more details.