Projects will start no later than February 2013 and run for 6 months.

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1 Pilot Project Funding Call The Communities and Culture Network+ would like to invite applications for up to 25k ( 30k for international projects) to fund discrete pilot projects of 6 months duration. We aim to fund up to 3 projects. Projects will start no later than February 2013 and run for 6 months. The projects aim to: - Investigate or develop a key issue, idea, or cultural practice through empirical and conceptual work. - Involve and/or work with communities either through direct engagement and/or through community and/or sector facing events and activities. - Enable the exploration of ideas or materials that could lead to further projects, develop the knowledge base and research of the Network+ in productive and insightful ways enabling future work, and impact into communities and contexts beyond their initial scope. - Identify key challenges and areas for the future, develop relations across academia, industry and policy and explore international relations where appropriate. Themes: In the first round of project calls, we are seeking to fund activities that develop from and speak to the critical and conceptual issues emerging from our four scoping areas. These are: 1. Cultural Heritage & Built Environment (University of Kent): Pervasive media and technology means that the wider shifts identified above are no longer based on-screen but are integrated into everyday life and the very fabric of urban and rural environments and institutions. Heritage in this strand refers to institutions, lived and placed environments and the cultural interactions with them. We ask the extent to which such interactions, and consequent understandings and productions of heritage, have been altered by digital technologies. As public sector funding for many cultural institutions is cut, we need to radically rethink how such community bases of local and national identity are supported. But we also need to reconceptualize heritage in a digital age, as something that is mobile, global, flowing and related to content, technologies, codes and software, but is also embedded into wider cultural sectors and processes. 2. Public Engagement & Cultures of Expertise (University of Leeds): This stream investigates the claims made about digital content, particularly as evidence of different forms of engagement (civic/public, community or expert engagement) and how these claims produce forms and practices of knowledge and expertise. We will reconceptualize public engagement and cultures of expertise through a range of investigations and engagements with local and national communities and institutions (local government, charities, education, news, marketing companies), information itself (blogs, posts, reports, audio-visual content), and users (individual expertise). What is engagement in a digital environment and what does it look like? What new modes and practices of engagement are emerging, and what kinds of cultural products result? What are the implications of these new forms of engagement and new cultural products for communities and cultures? Our strand will include desk research, online tools such as web analytics, interviews, focus groups, workshops, visiting and international speakers, and community representatives. We

2 will utilize the notion of the network as a key method, drawing on expertise at Leeds and in the wider community at key moments, and engaging that network for dissemination purposes. 3. Literacy, Expertise and Knowledge (University of Sussex): will consider questions of digital literacy, and more broadly questions of digital engagement, and the kinds of expertise are necessary to access/enable engagement. We will reconceptualize the digital divide with particular reference to communities of exclusion (e.g. sense-based, economic, age, language), and in doing so will address questions of how digital technology itself is conceptualized and understood. How do cultures and communities become better enabled to engage with, use, make sense of and even make digital media? How can places that are mediated enable access better (e.g. libraries etc). What does it mean to be code-literate? This strand will explore secondary literatures developments in education and digital media, literacy and Ofcom, questions of computational reticence amongst particular groups, even interface design etc. It will include desk research, interviews, focus groups, workshops, visiting speakers, and community representatives. Dissemination will in part by through data visualization and web work. 4. Everyday Life and Cultural Communities (University of Aberdeen): By comparison to the first strand, cultural heritage here refers to everyday sustainable life. Our final strand investigates everyday cultures, wellbeing and life/community histories. Along with institutions, and built environments, culture is also shaped through lived quotidian actions and interactions within and without communities. Here we ask not only about the digital transformations in terms of producing and shaping everyday life and cultural communities, but also about the long term implications in terms of shaping local history and heritage, constructing local expertise, and health environments. We expect projects to operate at two levels: level one entails specific focus on a key community, form or institution (e.g. health, wellbeing, lifestyle, environment, creative sectors, media cultures, creative/cultural industries). Level two maps these themes to the broader issues and challenges identified by the scoping studies (issues of expertise, heritage, narrative, connectivity/participation, identity, information/data, citizenship, leisure). Pilot projects should be both empirical and/or conceptual, and have empirical and/or conceptual outputs. These thematic areas are not discrete. We are aware that their concerns overlap. Successful bids thus do not have to align with themes, but are expected to relate their bids to the field of inquiry the themes map, taken as a whole, and explain how they respond to concerns raised in at least one or two of the areas specified. Preliminary scoping reports can be found on our website but it is suggested that informal discussions with the scoping leaders should be held in advance of an application in order to ensure that they link into the initial scoping themes. Prior participation in scoping events will also be looked upon favourably as an indication that the teams concerned are already engaged with network+ issues as they are being developed. Grant Conditions: We have stipulated that applications for project funding in this round ideally needs to be made of up to 50% from the core membership of the Network+. Core members are defined as academics that have attended one or more of our events since January A list of core members, should you wish to approach them with a project idea, can be found on our website at Funded projects should (i) work closely and productively with non-academic partners, (ii) utilize a spectrum of experience including doctoral and/or post-doc students (iii) include dissemination/forward planning strategies that aim to connect the discrete project in productive ways and link to general aims and goals of the Communities and Culture Network+ (Note statement of intention (iv) include an

3 internationalization strategy (where appropriate) and budget to ensure wider impact and direction. Project leaders will be required, as a grant condition, to produce 3 reports: 1. A preliminary report identifying how their project will extend the work and critical questions emerging from the scoping study, 2. An interim report at the mid-way stage reflecting on the methods, practices and approaches. Please note that the start date of the grant is February Interim reports will be required in April 2013 to tie into ongoing network and project calls. 3. A final report detailing the future questions and areas (format is negotiable). These reports will be published on the website, and used to develop further funding calls and further work. Project leaders are also required, as a grant condition, to attend and present at two events: 1. A symposium in February 2013 for all successful pilot project applicants 2. The annual Communities and Culture Network+ event in September 2013 (University of Leeds) Application Process - Deadline for applications: 30 th November, 4pm - Panel Meeting: week th December. The application will be peer reviewed by a floating panel drawn from the Network+ community, and others recruited as required, to represent the scope of its expertise. They will assess the quality and fit of the proposals in accordance with the terms of reference and criteria listed above. - Decisions to applicants: 4 th January - Commencement of Projects: no later that 4 th February 2013 Pilot project applications should be ed to R.H.Wilkinson@Leeds.ac.uk no later than 4pm on Friday 30 th November. The application should consist of: 1. Case for Support (max. 2 pages) 2. Timeline (max. 1 Page) 3. Key participants (max. 1 page) 4. Justification of resources (max. 1 page) The Case for Support should include the following headers: 1. Context and Rationale: why is this project important? How does it develop from the scoping areas? What is the central theme of the project and why should it be explored? 2. Aims: what do you intend to investigate in the project and how? How will the themes identified above be addressed? How does this relate to the theme of digital transformation of communities and culture? How does it investigate the transformative potential of digital technologies? 3. Format: what format does the project take?

4 4. Outputs: how will the project contribute productively to the Network+ and widen dissemination beyond it? In addition to the case for support, we require: Timeline: A Gantt or equivalent indicator of the timeline of activities and outputs for the project. Key participants: A brief summary of the expertise and interests of the main leaders/participants of the project. Justification of Resources: A breakdown of costs. - Investigator - Research time - Travel and Subsistence - Equipment Projects will be funded according to Research Council funding regulations in accordance with EPSRC guidelines. Please remember that a web presence will be provided via the communitiesandculture.org website, and reasonable administrative support in the form of dissemination and promotion is via the network coordinator, Rosie Wilkinson. If you have any queries about the justification of resources and what we can fund, please pvacresearch@leeds.ac.uk who can answer any questions. About the Communities and Culture Network+ The Communities and Culture strand of the Digital Economy theme (June ) investigates the digital transformations of communities and culture. We directly address the actual, claimed and potential impact of mobile and digital technologies on everyday life, citizenship, culture and community. Funded by the RCUK and led by the EPSRC, the 1.5m network+ is one of four challenge areas (others are Sustainable Society, IT as Utility, and New Economic Models) that have been developed for two key purposes. The first is to consolidate and extend existing research in these areas, by bringing together crossdisciplinary and cross research council projects and researchers in order to identify future Grand Challenges for the Digital Economy. The second rationale is to respond to and direct technological innovation and change within and across the four sectors identified above. Four scoping studies are already underway in the four areas identified above. These scoping studies involve both desk research and empirical work, and you can see both interim reports and relevant documents and reports on the website. About the UK Digital Economy Theme The Research Councils UK Digital Economy Theme 1 is supporting research to rapidly realize the transformational impact of digital technologies on aspects of community life, cultural experiences, future society, and the economy. To achieve this we bring together a unique community of researchers (from diverse disciplines including social science, engineering, computer science, the arts and medical 1

5 research) and users (people, business, government) to study, understand and find solutions to real problems. The DE Theme has formed four challenge areas to describe the research we support: Communities and Culture; Sustainable Society; IT as a Utility; New Economic Models. This call focuses on Communities and Culture.