Submissions open for Digital Xtra’s Grant Awards (United Kingdom)

These will once again be for schools and community organisations looking to start up or scale up extracurricular tech activities for young people. Supported activities must teach children and young people skills such as coding, robotics, games design, data science and cyber helping inspire Scotland’s next generation of digital innovators, leaders, and technologists.

Objectives

• The Core Objective of Digital Xtra is to inspire young people to learn digital technologies skills through high quality, exciting extracurricular activities, thus expanding Scotland’s future talent pipeline. All supported initiatives must meet this objective as well as any number of the charity’s secondary objectives.

Funding Information

• The requested grant amount ranges from £500 to £5,000.

Eligible Projects

• Applications are sought for initiatives which demonstrate meaningful and stimulating ways of engaging young people in digital tech. Applicants must clearly explain how participants will learn about and innovate with technology, not simply use it, and what digital and meta-skills they will gain. Digital Xtra also believes in an inclusive approach to enrich the learning experiences for all those involved and help build a more diverse and vibrant tech industry. As such, Digital Xtra is especially keen to support projects which appeal to:
  • audiences from areas often excluded from digital tech activities through lack of local facilities or geography (i.e. areas of high deprivation and/or rural isolation)
  • groups underrepresented in the digital technologies sector (i.e. girls and young women, minority groups, children and young people with additional support needs)
  • other audiences currently unengaged in digital technologies

What they are looking for?

• Digital Xtra is looking for evidence that the grant is needed, is of value, and that the activity will provide a sustainable positive impact on the provision of extracurricular digital technologies and computing science activity across Scotland for young people aged 16 years or under. Activities which provide ‘real-world’ context for the skills being learnt while promoting industry engagement and/or various career pathways are also particularly of interest. Partnerships with other organisations such as industry, trade bodies, charities, schools, or other extracurricular activity providers are encouraged.

Eligibility Criteria

• To be eligible, applicants must meet the following criteria:
  • Main Applicant is a UK registered company or UK registered charity, chartered body, local authority, school, college, or university actively involved in the provision of computing education and/or digital technologies related activities for young people
  • The proposed initiative meets the charity’s Core Objective
  • The grant requested is between £500 and £5,000
  • The primary audience are young people aged 16 years or under
  • The proposed initiative will commence after 1 July 2025 and be completed by 30 June 2026
  • The proposed initiative will be delivered entirely in Scotland
  • The activity is considered ‘extracurricular’ in nature.

For more information, visit Digital Xtra.