London taking final applications for £1 million resilience fund

A £1 million (US$1.34 million) fund designed to help build resilience among small businesses and community groups across London is taking final applications for grants of up to £40,000.

Launched in July by London Mayor Sadiq Khan and innovation foundation Nesta, the fund will look to tackle inequality, poor air quality, ageing society and other social issues by matching organisations with innovators to help find new ways of delivering their products and services.

“Our Resilience Fund will play an important role in helping the city recover from the pandemic,” said Mayor Khan.

“Great ideas, developed from the grassroots up, will be vital to helping the capital move forward – and so I’m urging individuals and groups from all communities to come forward with their solutions to London’s challenges.”

Ten groups will be selected to work alongside UK innovators to help London move forward post COVID-19, and organisations have until 14 December to submit applications.

Following selection in January 2021, the next stage of the fund will involve an open competition in Spring 2021 to award grants to innovators to:

• Create greater food retail diversity to boost the economy, improve health and strengthen local communities
• Ensure swift and culturally competent community mental health and bereavement support
• Put vacant or underused retail units to creative re-use to enhance public spaces
• Develop data models that forecast the impact of shocks on supply chains to boost operational resilience
• Use technology to predict how demand for food banks may change during a crisis and help community groups to leverage collective action across networks remotely

Climate Smart City Challenge

In November, Nesta announced a global call for its Climate Smart City Challenge to help cities develop and scale potential solutions to their greenhouse gas challenges.

Three selected cities will work with a global pool of experts from the technological, business and investor fields to develop solutions and improve cities’ futures.

More specifically, the initiative – run by UN-Habitat, Smart City Sweden, Vinnova, the Swedish Energy Agency, Expo 2020 Sweden Teknikföretagen, Viable Cities – will provide selected cities with:

• The opportunity to co-design an open innovation competition supported by a team of experts from UN-Habitat, Viable Cities and Nesta Challenges
• A pool of solution providers competing to solve challenges
• Access to potential investors and partners to implement projects
• Peer learning opportunities with other cities facing similar challenges
• Profile-raising opportunities, including being featured in the World Expo in 2021 and being profiled in a major media campaign over the course of the challenge

Applications are open until 22 January 2021, and winning cities will be presented at the World Expo in Dubai in October 2021 when the Climate Smart Cities Challenge is set to be officially launched.

Nesta has awarded £12.5 million pounds to 9,000 innovators since 2010, covering areas including connected technologies, farming modernisation, smart ageing, and inclusive technologies.