Funding Competition: MyWorld Collaborative Research and Development (Round 2) – UK

This is funded by the UKRI Strength in Places Fund and builds on the West of England’s strengths in creative media production, technology and research.

MyWorld is a 5 year programme that presents opportunities to create, deliver and understand experiences in creative technology, driving forward the future of media in the UK and beyond.

The aim of this programme is to help the UK to grow and maintain a position as an international leader in advanced media production. MyWorld is combining research excellence, industrial stakeholders and a history of collaboration in the Bristol and Bath region. It addresses the need to develop diverse technologies associated with:

• the capture, manipulation, distribution and consumption of experiences, as defined in the specific themes section
• the understanding of audiences responses to, and interactions with, those experiences

The aim of this competition is to support business-focused research and innovation in the creative industries in the West of England. Your proposal must demonstrate a positive impact in the West of England area.

Specific Themes

Your project must focus on screen based and immersive technologies within the creative sector industries including one or more of the following:

• Creating experiences
  • How acquisition, production and delivery relate to narrative, aesthetic and content types or formats in modulating experience, leading to new intelligent acquisition and production methods that facilitate immersion.
• Delivering experiences
  • Platforms, network technology and representations that support new forms of content delivery and interactivity and delivery processes that ensure the preservation of immersive properties during transmission.
• Measuring experiences
  • Perceptually robust means of assessing media quality and immersion that inform creative practice and editorial decision making and that differentiate the impacts of technology and narrative.

Project Size

• Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £100,000 and £200,000.

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • start by 1 July 2024
    • end by 31 December 2025
    • last between 12 and 18 months
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the West of England area
  • Projects must always start on the first of the month and this must be stated within your application. Your project start date will be reflected in your grant offer letter if you are successful.
  • Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project your organisation:
    • must be a UK registered business of any size, not for profit organisation or charity
    • must collaborate with one of the four universities in the West of England region
    • can collaborate with other UK registered organisations
    • must intend to exploit the results from or in the West of England area
  • The lead organisation can be based outside of the West of England area. Justification must be made in your application as to why the project could not be led by an organisation from the West of England area. You must explain how the project outputs will be exploited for the economic benefit of the West of England region.
• Project team
  • You must collaborate with at least one of the Universities based in the West of England:
    • University of Bath
    • Bath Spa University
    • University of Bristol
    • University of the West of England
  • You can also collaborate with additional organisations. These organisations must be one of the following UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • charity
    • not for profit
    • public sector organisation
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)
  • Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs in the application.
  • To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
• Non-funded partners
  • Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
• Subcontractors
  • Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
  • Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
  • You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
  • All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
• Number of applications
  • A business, charity or not for profit can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.