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Pre-announcement: Locally Unlocking Culture through Inclusive Access (LUCIA)
Apply for funding to form a community-driven research network to enhance access to culture. Funded networks will create partnerships across communities, researchers, and policymakers, to promote urban cultural renewal.
You must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funding.
Before applying for funding, check the following:
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has introduced new role types for funding opportunities being run on the new UKRI Funding Service.
For full details, visit Eligibility as an individual.
Who is eligible to apply
Leadership team
Applications should be led by a strong, interdisciplinary leadership team who can articulate a clear shared vision for the network. You should ensure partnerships within the leadership team are equitable, inclusive and support innovative interdisciplinary approaches.
Project co-leads from cultural, cultural policy and other relevant sectors, as well as representation from people with expertise by experience, must be included as part of the leadership team. These co-leads from outside of academia can be costed at 100% FEC where justified. This should be utilised to ensure equitable representation and remuneration for different partners.
For administrative purposes it is necessary to identify a single project lead who must be affiliated with the lead research organisation. The project lead and their research office will be ultimately responsible for administration of the grant.
However, the balance of activity and management across the leadership team and partner organisations can be shared flexibly and however you see fit as a collective. As an example, you could adopt a shared leadership approach with project co-leads included. Your approach to management, leadership and decision making must be clearly specified in your application.
Your network application should be submitted by the project lead but must be co-created and co-designed with input from all partners involved. This co-creation should be evidenced in the application.
Project lead
Standard AHRC eligibility criteria will apply to this funding opportunity for UK principal investigators and research organisation.
You must be a resident in the UK and be hosted by an eligible research organisation (higher education institutions or recognised independent research organisations) as stated in the research funding guide.
Project co-leads based at eligible research organisations
Standard AHRC eligibility criteria will apply to this funding opportunity for UK project co-leads based at eligible research organisations.
You must be a resident in the UK and be hosted by an eligible research organisation (higher education institutions or recognised independent research organisations) as stated in the research funding guide.
Project co-leads not based at eligible research organisations
Project co-leads not based at eligible research organisations must also be included in the leadership team, for example:
- practitioners from cultural, cultural policy and other relevant sectors
- people with expertise by experience
- community organisations
- community researchers
- third sector and voluntary organisations
- policymakers
- local, regional and national government, including metropolitan combined authorities
- private sector
Where justified, the time of these project co-leads can be listed under ‘Exceptions’ and will be funded at 100% FEC. 100% FEC ‘Exceptions’ costs are only for staff time and cannot include estates and indirect costs.
The combined costs for UK-based project co-leads not employed by eligible research organisations must be a minimum of 10% of the total FEC of the grant application. If the combined cost for UK project co-leads not based at eligible research organisations is below 10%, you must clearly articulate why and how partners from outside academia are equitably included within the project. The combined cost cannot exceed 30% of the total FEC.
The intention behind this requirement is to ensure partners from outside of academia are appropriately included and funded within applications.
We recognise that some partners may be employed by a government-funded organisation. To avoid the double counting of public funds in the costings, no salary costs will be covered for project co-leads from government bodies where the person’s involvement in the project falls within their regular duties. Government organisations can only charge to the grant any additional costs they incur as a result of being involved in the project.
Please note that if there are international project co-leads in your application, the combined costs for project co-leads not based at eligible research organisations, and any international project co-leads must not exceed 30% of the FEC. You should consider what balance of project co-leads is needed and explain this clearly in your application.
Project co-leads not based at eligible research organisations should submit a statement of support from their organisation (if they are based at an organisation) as part of your network application. This will be used to assess how effectively and inclusively the proposed network brings together individuals from across relevant sectors.
Early career researchers
We particularly encourage applications from early career researchers (both as project leads and project co-leads) and regard this programme as an important pipeline for growing interdisciplinary researcher capacity in the UK. Support for leadership from early career researchers and showing that you have the right skills at the right level should be clearly explained in your application.
If the project lead is an early career researcher, as defined by AHRC, a mentor must be included within the application. This mentor must be clearly outlined in the resources and cost justification section of the application form.
For mentoring cost, an hour per month of the mentor’s time should be built into the budget as a directly allocated cost and entered in the application form in the other directly allocated costs section. Estates and indirect costs for this one hour can also be charged to the grant.
Institutions may provide additional mentoring support alongside other forms of leadership or career development support for early career applicants.
Applicants at other stages of their career can also include mentorship in the application if it is felt it would support the project leadership and benefit delivery of the proposed work.
Equality, diversity and inclusion
We are committed to achieving equality of opportunity for all funding applicants. We encourage applications from a diverse range of researchers.
We support people to work in a way that suits their personal circumstances. This includes:
- career breaks
- support for people with caring responsibilities
- flexible working
- alternative working patterns
Find out more about equality, diversity and inclusion at UKRI.
Aim
This Locally Unlocking Culture through Inclusive Access (LUCIA) programme aims to empower communities across the UK to have the agency and opportunity to enable growth and address equitable access to culture. It will do this by funding partnerships which amplify seldom heard voices; which respect diverse cultural identities; and which facilitate creative expression, in order that innovative solutions can be found to widen community participation in culture across the UK.
The LUCIA programme objectives are:
- to develop collaborative research networks to actively engage local communities in widening access to cultural expression
- to understand local cultural complexities, barriers and enablers, with a view to improving wellbeing in communities throughout the UK
- to converge data and learning from a range of local and regional models to inform the spread and adoption of collaborative cultural policy across the UK
Scope
The programme will fund networks comprised of community practitioners, researchers and policymakers for 12 months, to explore opportunities for widening cultural access and expression within UK communities.
It is expected that each network will engage with their research organisation’s public engagement team throughout the application process, to ensure that public engagement is prioritised throughout activities planned.
Applications should demonstrate equitable co-creation and co-production with community partners and people with expertise by experience, and clearly identify any barriers to access for those participants.
For more information on the background of this funding opportunity, go to the Additional information section.
Duration
The duration of the funded network projects is 12 months.
Projects must start by 1 April 2026.
Funding available
The FEC of your network can be up to £100,000.
AHRC will fund 80% of the FEC.
What we will fund
- networks of individual stakeholders across the diverse cultural and cultural policy sector, working together in an equitable way to ensure all stakeholder voices are heard
- networks with innovative research methodologies to enhance cultural access within and across communities in the UK
- networks which demonstrate a commitment to ensuring equity, diversity and inclusion for all as a central priority within all proposed workstreams
- networks which aim to build/rebuild healthy cultural exchange with communities
- networks which collaborate on policy to enact meaningful change
- networks with scalable and sustainable funding plans
Supporting skills and talent
We encourage you to follow the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and the Technician Commitment.
Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I)
UKRI is committed in ensuring that effective international collaboration in research and innovation takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks. Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I) is a UKRI work programme designed to help protect all those working in our thriving and collaborative international sector by enabling partnerships to be as open as possible, and as secure as necessary. Our TR&I Principles set out UKRI’s expectations of organisations funded by UKRI in relation to due diligence for international collaboration.
As such, applicants for UKRI funding may be asked to demonstrate how their proposed projects will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help proportionately reduce these risks.
See further guidance and information about TR&I – including where applicants can find additional support.
We are running this funding opportunity on the new UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Funding Service so please ensure that your organisation is registered. You cannot apply on the Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) system. We will publish full details on how to apply when the funding opportunity opens.
The project lead is responsible for completing the application process on the Funding Service, but we expect all team members and project partners to contribute to the application.
Applications should be prepared and submitted by the lead research organisation but should be co-created with input from all investigators, and project partners, and should represent the proposed work of the entire network.
There is an optional notification of intent (NoI) stage for this UKRI funding opportunity, more information can be expected within the full opportunity launch page.
To apply
Select ‘Start application’ near the beginning of this Funding finder page.
- Confirm you are the project lead.
- Sign in or create a Funding Service account. To create an account, select your organisation, verify your email address, and set a password. If your organisation is not listed, email support@funding-service.ukri.org
Please allow at least 10 working days for your organisation to be added to the Funding Service. We strongly suggest that if you are asking UKRI to add your organisation to the Funding Service to enable you to apply to this funding opportunity, you also create an organisation Administration Account. This will be needed to allow the acceptance and management of any grant that might be offered to you. - Answer questions directly in the text boxes. You can save your answers and come back to complete them or work offline and return to copy and paste your answers. If we need you to upload a document, follow the upload instructions in the Funding Service. All questions and assessment criteria are listed in the How to apply section on this Funding finder page.
- Allow enough time to check your application in ‘read-only’ view before sending to your research office.
- Send the completed application to your research office for checking. They will return it to you if it needs editing.
- Your research office will submit the completed and checked application to UKRI.
Where indicated, you can also demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant.
- use images sparingly and only to convey important information that cannot easily be put into words
- insert each new image onto a new line
- provide a descriptive legend for each image immediately underneath it (this counts towards your word limit)
- files must be smaller than 5MB and in JPEG, JPG, JPE, JFI, JIF, JFIF, PNG, GIF, BMP or WEBP format
Watch our research office webinars about the new Funding Service.
For more guidance on the Funding Service, see:
- how applicants use the Funding Service
- how research offices use the Funding Service
- how reviewers use the Funding Service
References
Applications should be self-contained, and hyperlinks should only be used to provide links directly to reference information. To ensure the information’s integrity is maintained, where possible, persistent identifiers such as digital object identifiers should be used. Assessors are not required to access links to carry out assessment or recommend a funding decision. Applicants should use their discretion when including references and prioritise those most pertinent to the application.
References should be included in the appropriate question section of the application and be easily identifiable by the assessors for example (Smith, Research Paper, 2019).
You must not include links to web resources to extend your application.
Deadline
AHRC must receive your application by 10 April 2025 4:00pm UK time.
You will not be able to apply after this time.
Make sure you are aware of and follow any internal institutional deadlines that may be in place.
Following the submission of your application to the funding opportunity, your application cannot be changed, and applications will not be returned for amendment. If your application does not follow the guidance, it may be rejected.
Personal data
Processing personal data
AHRC, as part of UKRI, will need to collect some personal information to manage your Funding Service account and the registration of your funding applications.
We will handle personal data in line with UK data protection legislation and manage it securely. For more information, including how to exercise your rights, read our privacy notice.
Publication of outcomes
AHRC, as part of UKRI, will publish the outcomes of this funding opportunity at AHRC board and panel outcomes.
If your application is successful, we will publish some personal information on the UKRI Gateway to Research.
Get help with your application
If you have a question and the answers aren’t provided on this page
Important note: The Helpdesk is committed to helping users of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Funding Service as effectively and as quickly as possible. In order to manage cases at peak volume times, the Helpdesk will triage and prioritise those queries with an imminent opportunity deadline or a technical issue. Enquiries raised where information is available on the Funding Finder opportunity page and should be understood early in the application process (for example, regarding eligibility or content/remit of an opportunity) will not constitute a priority case and will be addressed as soon as possible.
Contact details
For help and advice on costings and writing your proposal please contact your research office in the first instance, allowing sufficient time for your organisation’s submission process.
For questions related to this specific funding opportunity please contact heuh@ahrc.ukri.org and include ‘LUCIA’ in the subject line of your email for ease.
Any queries regarding the system or the submission of applications through the Funding Service should be directed to the helpdesk.
Email: support@funding-service.ukri.org
Phone: 01793 547490
Our phone lines are open:
- Monday to Thursday 8:30am to 5:00pm
- Friday 8:30am to 4:30pm
To help us process queries quicker, we request that users highlight the council and opportunity name in the subject title of their email query, include the application reference number, and refrain from contacting more than one mailbox at a time.
See further information on submitting an application.
Sensitive information
If you or a core team member need to tell us something you wish to remain confidential, email heuh@ahrc.ukri.org
Include in the subject line: [the funding opportunity title; sensitive information; your Funding Service application number].
Typical examples of confidential information include:
- individual is unavailable until a certain date (for example due to parental leave)
- declaration of interest
- additional information about eligibility to apply that would not be appropriately shared in the ‘Applicant and team capability’ section
- conflict of interest for UKRI to consider in panel participant selection
- the application is an invited resubmission
For information about how UKRI handles personal data, read UKRI’s privacy notice.
