Community Voices is about supporting communities based in England to make a meaningful difference to their lives with the help of digital media.

There are grants available for 26 different community projects. 10 of these are for £1,500, 10 are for £7,000, and six are for £14,000. You may apply for more than one grant level, but each application must be made separately and will be considered on its own merits.

Applications must be submitted by 28 February 2010. We will notify you by 31 March 2010 to let you know whether or not you have been selected as one of the 26 funded projects.

You can download an editable application form here.  If you do not have Adobe Reader, you will need to download it here

Our specific focus is on those communities who have the greatest experience of social isolation or disadvantage. In the Glossary  we explain further what we mean by certain terms such as ‘digital media’ and ‘social isolation and disadvantage’, however if, after referring to these, you are still unsure whether your project proposal meets these criteria or would like to discuss your community’s circumstances further, please contact us before submitting your application.

While we are careful not to use definitions that are not relevant to you and your community, we will ask you to provide detailed information on why you feel your community is isolated, excluded or disadvantaged, in order to help us with our selection.

Additionally, all applicants will need to demonstrate how their community will drive the project and how it will help benefit the community itself; as opposed to outside initiatives that are introduced into the community without direct community backing.

Your project idea does not have to be about making a digital media product directly, such as a film or a website, but it should aim to make a difference in your community and to help you find a voice and get it heard. For example it could help people to gain confidence in using social media to reduce their feeling of isolation or harness the benefits of digital television to enable people to access key information more easily. Keep in mind that the key focus of this project is on the difference your project will enable the community to make not which digital media you use.

Communities will be evaluated for funding based on the strength of their overall project proposal and application, however we will also aim to represent a diverse range of communities, projects, digital media and geographical areas within the final 26 funded projects.

Before answering any of the questions take a look through the whole form first so that you have a clear idea overall of the information we need. If you are unsure about any aspect of the form or the sort of information we need please contact us for further assistance.

We understand that some people find written forms challenging to complete, so if this is relevant to you, you can submit your application in a variety of different ways, including in recorded audio or video format. If you require assistance with submitting your application form, or would like to discuss how else you can apply, please contact us.

Once you submit your application you will receive an application reference number, which will be unique to you and which you can use in any further communication with us. If for any reason you’re not sure what your number is, contact us.

What you should know if your community project is selected for a grant:

•   Each selected project must be ready to get going by 1 April 2010 and have a clear plan for what it wants to achieve up to 31 March 2011. Please note that your project does not necessarily need to end by March 2011 but must be well under way.
•     As part of the Community Voices project, your community will also be supported by digital mentors to help you to develop the project and digital media skills to bring it to life.
• We will also provide training for up to four people from each selected project, to help them understand how best digital media can be used to maximise the benefits that their project will deliver.
•     Communities not selected to receive funding will be notified by 31 March 2010, but will be advised about the free and subsidised support that is available from Media Trust and our partners.

We look forward to receiving your grant application – don’t forget to contact us if you think we can help further.
Thank you!
Community Voices Team, Media Trust
2nd Floor, Riverwalk House, 157-161 Millbank, London SW1P 4RR communityvoices@mediatrust.org 020 7217 3751



Question 1

Your project must be ready to get going by 1 April 2010 and have a clear plan for what you want to achieve up to 31 March 2011. Your project does not necessarily need to have an end date, but must be well under way by March 2011. Please note that Community Voices is funded up to March 2011 and we will need to be able to show what difference each project has made over this period.

Question 2
How and why your community is socially isolated and/or disadvantaged is a key part of Community Voices, which is why we ask you to confirm this at the beginning of the application form. If you would like to discuss your community’s circumstances in more detail please contact us.

Question 3
The person whose details you provide will need to be available throughout the application period up to the end of March 2010. We need to be able to contact them if we have any questions about the application submitted. We will only call during working hours (Mon – Fri, between 9:30am and 5:30pm), unless you request otherwise. Please note that if we are unable to contact the person named your application may not be accepted.

Question 4
If you know who will be responsible for managing your community project, put their details in the boxes provided. However if you are not sure, you will need to agree who is going to act as the principal contact. This should be someone from your community or, where this is not possible, someone who can act on your behalf, for example a care or development worker. This person will be responsible for ensuring that the grant is spent as agreed, and will work closely with us during the course of the project. This person will also be the initial point of contact with the digital mentors who will assist you with the project. Remember, you don’t have to be an officially recognised community or registered organisation.

Question 5
We are unable to transfer funds into an individual’s personal bank account. Don’t worry if your community or organisation does not have a dedicated bank account, you are still able to apply for a grant, and we can arrange to allocate budget and make payments on your behalf. In these circumstances the person named on the application form will remain responsible for ensuring that the funds are allocated appropriately.

Question 6
So that your grant can benefit your community as much as possible, you will need to think carefully about how much your project will cost. If you are unfamiliar with costing out a project you could speak to your community, or anybody that you’re hoping to involve in the project, to see if they agree with your estimates. Remember, you can submit one application for each level of grant, and each application will be considered separately on its own merits. If you tick more than one grant level, your application will not be valid.

Question 7
We want to offer the opportunity to apply for a grant to as many communities as possible. However, the following types of project are not eligible for funding:

•   Purely promotional work about an organisation and its functions for marketing purposes (including websites, flyers, advertising materials, video etc)
•    Projects that are run purely for profit or projects that stand to unreasonably profit from their actions
•    Registered political parties or organisations connected or affiliated with a single political party
•    Projects that are part of the National Curriculum or part of a college/ university course
•    Projects where the majority of beneficiaries live outside England
•    Sole traders or projects where the only beneficiary is an individual

If the grant you are applying for will not be sufficient to fund your project idea completely, you are in the process of seeking alternative or additional funding, or there are aspects of your project that fall outside of the funding criteria for Community Voices, tick the Yes box in Question 7. We may need to contact you once your application has been submitted to find out more.

Question 8
Are you seeking or have you secured additional funding for your project? Who else are you speaking to about funding for this project? If you are, it is helpful for us to have as much information as possible. Remember that your community project needs to adhere to our guidelines in this application, and be able to get going at the beginning of April 2010 if you are selected for a grant.

Please note that our aim is to ensure that funded projects are conducted in a collaborative way, with good relationships where relevant with other similar projects, partners and funders so that the benefit to the community is maximised. It is useful for us to know as early as possible which other organisations, support services and funding will be associated with your application to Community Voices.

We know that ‘community’ can be interpreted in many ways, and while we want you to tell us about your particular community, we ask you to apply as one of two broad types of community for the purposes of Community Voices, in line with terms commonly referred to. We will ask you whether you are applying as a ‘Community of Geography’ or a ‘Community of Interest’, using the following guidelines.
 

‘Community’

•   A specific group of people who hold in common a shared locality, geographical place or interest.
•   We may ask to meet some of the members of your community in order to understand your project proposal more fully.

‘Community of Geography’

• A group of people who are primarily connected toeach other by their shared locality or geography. For example this could be a community based on one particular street or housing estate, or a larger area such as a county or region.
• If you choose to apply as  a ‘Community of Geography’, your project proposal should show how it will involve and benefit as many different people who live there as possible.

‘Community of Interest’ 

•  A group of people who are primarily connected
• to each other by their shared circumstance or sense of identity, for example an ethnic minority community, or by their shared experience or common struggle, for example a group of young carers, beyond sharing a geographical connection.
• Communities who choose to define themselves as a ‘Community of Interest’ should note that, although your project proposal may have a base in a single location, you will need to demonstrate how the project has the potential to engage individuals, sharing the same identity or experience, who live outside that location.
• ‘Social isolation and disadvantage’
• The environmental and personal circumstances that prevent individuals or communities from accessing or taking advantage of the opportunities that are available to other citizens.

To help you work your way through the questions we have created a simple example of a community who might feel unheard or isolated. Where relevant we’ll refer to this example community at different stages to help guide you on the sort of information we are looking for in each question.

Example:
Let’s say we have identified that older people living in our area don’t feel part of our community because there are a lack of opportunities to meet and socialise with other members of the community.

Question 9
Defining the challenges your community faces, specifically how and why your community experiences social isolation and/or disadvantage, can be very difficult, however you are best placed to tell us about your specific circumstances. We want you to help us understand what those challenges are and how they affect your community in particular.

When we talk about social disadvantage and/or isolation what we really want to know is, how do these issues or challenges affect the opportunities available to people in your community? For example, are people from your community less likely to find work or have access to public services?

The life chances or opportunities a person has can relate to both the environment where they live as well as to their personal circumstances such as the skills they have, how confident they feel or their family background. For example, how easily a person can find work could depend on how far away their nearest Job Centre is. It could
also depend on whether they have the opportunity to use the internet, which would require both computer and internet skills as well as access to the internet.

For the Community Voices project there is no fixed definition of social disadvantage or isolation, we want to understand why you feel your community is at a disadvantage. Related to this is how isolated a group of people feels; your community may feel overlooked by society regardless of where the members live, for example the housebound. Question 9 is your opportunity to explain how the experience and feeling of isolation or disadvantage affects the lives of people in your community.

When addressing this question keep in mind the focus of Community Voices. Whilst we understand that digital media may not be able to fully address all the complex circumstances that your community experiences, this project and the associated funding aim to help your community address its own experience of social isolation and/ or disadvantage by finding its voice and making it heard with the help of digital media.

Example of Community of Geography:

"We are a group of older people, but what primarily connects us is that we all live in the same area.”
For a group of older people who feel isolated from the main community to apply as a Community of Geography, our project proposal would need to show how it involves and benefits the whole community and not just the older people within it.

Example of Community of Interest:
“We are a community of people that all live in the same area, but what primarily connects us is that we are all older people, and we share similar challenges because of this”.
As a Community of Interest, our project proposal would need to show how it could involve and benefit other older people with similar circumstances of isolation, whether they are in our geographical area or somewhere else in England.

Question 11
This question is primarily to help us manage the grant applications internally, so we need an idea of where in England your community is located, by county. If this is the same as the county that you provided in the address details in Question 4, please repeat the county here. However if your community is primarily based in a different county, please tell us which one.

Question 12
This question is for you to give us more details of the geographical area that your community project will cover, as the county may not be the most relevant way to describe the location of your community.
Example:
Let’s say our community is based on a local housing estate in Plymouth, Devon. In Question 11 we can answer ‘Devon’ and in Question 12 we expand to say “We are residents in White Way housing estate just outside Plymouth”. If we feel that our community is part of a wider geographical community, and that this is relevant to our project proposal, we could add that “our project will involve and benefit more people throughout the South West, beyond our immediate community of residents”. For example a radio station or website for the housing estate might reach and benefit people further afield.

Question 13
Example:
You could describe whether you live in a rural or urban environment, tell us about the cross-section of people who live in your community, access to facilities and public services, or other common issues that are relevant to your application and your circumstances of isolation and/or disadvantage.

Question 14
For this project we define a ‘Community of Interest’ as a group of people who are primarily connected to each other by their shared circumstance, sense of identity, shared experience or common struggle over and above a geographical connection that they may share.
There are many different Communities of Interest, and we have listed some examples below. They are not prioritised and are intended to show the range of communities that can be defined in this way.

• Young people at risk of exclusion Homeless    
• Families of drug offenders or users   
• Care leavers
• Offenders under probation supervision
• People for whom English is not their first language.
• Refugees and asylum seekers  
• Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and/or Transgender    
• Ethnic minority community groups n    
• People with a learning disability n    
• People with mental health problems n    
• People who are victims of hate crime
•  People who consider themselves to have a problem with literacy 
• Young carers i.e. young people whocare for their siblings and/or parent or guardian

What experience or identity does your community share? What is it that connects the people in your community?
We are not asking what activity brings people in your community together, such as a hobby or sport, we want to understand what is it that helps people to feel that they have something in common with other members of the community. What challenges does your community encounter when trying to access or use digital media? This will help us to make an informed decision about how to support you with digital mentors.

Question 15
We’ve outlined below the basic structure of a project that you may wish to use to help explain your idea.
1. What do you want to address?
Your Project Aim is the overall difference that you want your project to make, and explains why the project exists or needs to exist. Think back to the reasons you gave as to why your community experiences social isolation and/or disadvantage. We suggest that your project should Aim
to address only one of these main reasons so that you can maintain a clear focus throughout the project. Once you have identified which key problem you want to address you can use it to help define the overall purpose of your community project.
Example:
We could summarise this as “To reduce the feeling of isolation that older people from the local community experience”.
2. What do you want to do about it?
Having defined the overall difference that you are aiming to make through your project, the next stage is to explain what you want to do to address this. Project Outcomes are the differences that your project will make as a result of what you plan to do.
A glossary of bolded words can be found on pages 28-29
Examples of the types of difference that your project might make include:

• Help individuals to develop personally e.g. help to increase their confidence or raise their aspirations
• Help people to develop skills and find pathways to formal education or employment.
• Help people to feel less alone and more supported
• Enable people to feel proud of their community
• Encourage people of different ages, background and abilities to have greater respect and understanding for each other
• Encourage greater involvement in local decision-making
• Raise awareness to people outside of the community of an issue affecting the community
• Make it easier for people to share their experiences with other members of their community, or other communities in general
• Help people to access important information more readily so that they can make more informed choices

Project Outcomes are really about breaking down the Project Aim into more specific objectives.
Example:
When developing your Project Outcomes, it is important to also think about how you will know if they have been achieved or not. Although we do not need this information at this stage, it is helpful to think about how you can measure whether your project has achieved its Aim or not. How you plan to measure your Project Outcomes will have an impact on which activities you plan to undertake.
3. How are you going to do it?
Project Activities are the things you plan to do, through your project, to address the Project Outcomes.
Example:
The activities we could undertake might include community events to encourage community members to socialise more with each other or the outside world by helping them to use social media, or use digital cameras or video recorders to capture how older people may feel and share the results with others to raise awareness of issues, or to encourage help from volunteers.
What activities are you planning as part of your project? These plans may evolve once your project gets underway, but it is important to try to define them at the outset. Your community will have access to personal support from digital mentors to help your members understand and use digital media. We will also provide training for up to four people, from each selected community, to help
them understand how digital media can be used to make your projects as effective as possible.
4. Who will be involved?
There may be significant communication challenges in reaching your community, which your project needs to address. It is important to explain in your proposal how your project will engage your community and how they will be able to find out about it.
Example
We might decide to setup a social networking website to help older people connect more readily and find out community information more speedily. However, if the majority of people who the project aims to reach aren’t confident users of the internet we could include in our proposal activities that will help community members to learn more about using the internet and social networking websites.an expand our Project Aim into three Project Outcomes:

• Help older people from the community to feel less alone
• Raise awareness amongst the wider community of the issue that older people are experiencing
• Make it easier for older people to meet and interact with other members of the community

Question 16

Do you have a clear idea at this stage of how the grant will be used? We need a broad breakdown of how you are going to allocate the grant according to your project proposal. This is so that we can understand that you’ve made realistic decisions around costing your project, however we know that this may change or become more detailed if you are selected.
Example:
We may use some of the grant to pay for a part-time community coordinator to liaise with older residents, or to purchase a video camera and hire a village hall for a day to use as a learning area for older people.
Depending on the exact circumstances of your project we may issue the grant in instalments.

We hope that the difference that your project makes will benefit your community, and ideally others, beyond the end of March 2011.
Although it is very hard to predict the outcomes of your project at this stage, it is important to think about the impact your project will have right from the start, so that it can still be felt in the long-term, and if necessary, so that you can secure additional funding. Your replies to these questions will also be helpful for us to evaluate the progress and achievements of your project along the way.
Working with others is also very valuable to the longer-term impact of your project. By connecting with other communities who share similar experiences, identities or challenges as yours, your project can have a greater impact. It’s also important to consider who else might be trying to achieve similar outcomes for your community as you do, and looking for ways in which you could work together.

Before answering Questions 17 and 18 you might find it helpful to ask yourself the following:

• Can my idea trigger further projects that will also benefit my community?
• Will my idea encourage other communities to either get involved with my project or start a project of their own?
• Will my idea help people within my community gain new skills or have access to new opportunities?

Question 17
How do you plan to connect with local organisations that are already working with your community? This could be your local council, UK Online Centre, charities, a Community Volunteer Service or another organisation such as your local healthcare service. Will your project compliment the services that they already provide, or will it fulfil a role that isn’t currently catered for? Either way, how will these local organisations find out about your project and how could they support you to help you make the difference you want to see?
Example:
We might look to create opportunities for older people, once they have developed new digital media skills. They could pass on their knowledge to to help others who are experiencing difficulties. For example, to help more people access information more readily through their community website and hence reduce their own feelings of isolation.

Question 18
How could your project inspire other communities? Each funded community project should think about how it can be a beacon project to inspire others to feel that they too can make a difference in their community.
Example:
Although we are principally trying to address why older people in our community feel isolated, we could also be an inspiration to other communities across England, to feel that they too can change their own circumstances by giving a voice to people who feel unheard. With this in mind we need to consider how best to highlight the difference that our project will make to the lives of not just older people within the community but the community as a whole.

Question 19
Help us get a feel for how many people will be able to get involved in your project. We don’t need to know exactly how many will benefit and we understand that this figure may change when your project gets underway, however it is helpful for us to know how many people you realistically believe will benefit from your project.

Question 20
If you do wish to submit additional information along with your application, please tick the Yes box in question 20. We may contact you to clarify what information you are sending and how, so that we can confirm it has reached us.
If you do want to send us anything else after submitting your application, remember to mark it with your application reference number.

 

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