Through a series of workshops run by The University of Manchester’s team research training and development programme (“Teams Build Dream”) in 2023, the community told us that more opportunities to network and build connections would be useful in advancing teaming and collaboration in the university’s research activities.

The UoM Teams Build Dreams programme therefore explored ways to enable such activities and settled on designing a seedcorn style ‘micro-catalyst’ call to enable small innovative hard-to-fund community-led ideas for networking, collaboration and relationship building.

This approach aligns with existing architectural design practices, and social research on interdisciplinarity and finding ways for people to make connections and promote serendipitous meetings.

The scheme currently has £10-15k GBP funds to support multiple projects over 2024-2025.

The inaugural call was opened in Q1 2024 with 6 studies from across all faculties within the university, successfully funded and now in progress.

Submissions in scope for the call included networking events, e.g. ‘huddles’; lunch and learns; knowledge exchanges, conference attendance, equipment purchase etc. All proposals must support team work; interdisciplinarity; capacity building; pedagogical approaches; networking and/or collaboration in research for the University of Manchester community. Reflecting the inclusivity of a team research (or team science) model, we accept submissions from ALL University of Manchester staff: academic, researcher, professional services, technical. We also strongly encouraged applications to recognise equality, diversity and inclusion, and stipulated that proposals must either create new, or develop existing relationships or networks.

18 submissions were received, and six were funded to a total of £5.5k GBP.

All projects will be completed by 31 July 2024 and will report on the innovation, outcomes, feedback and lessons learned through a written report and presenting at a showcase event. This will inform the next funding call planned for 24/25.

This poster will describe the process of designing a new funding scheme without blueprint, including call scope, application template, selection criteria, panel review composition. It will also discuss and reflect on lessons learned and future developments.