London’s communities and innovators are being urged to identify and develop solutions to the UK capital city’s biggest challenges and to help it “bounce forward” post Covid-19.

The £1m Mayor’s Resilience Fund – launched by the mayor of London and delivered in partnership with Nesta Challenges – will support groups from local authorities to charitable organisations to identify and develop solutions to the capital’s biggest challenges.

Innovative solutions

Community groups, such as local authorities, public agencies and social enterprises, will be asked to identify specific challenges they need to have solved. Ten specific challenges will be selected and in the new year, the country’s best innovators will be invited to present how they plan to address these challenges through new technologies or by applying innovative solutions.

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

Each challenge will be given support of up to £40,000, as well as expert mentoring and advice. The challenges are split between the following areas:

• lack of social cohesion
• inequality
• poor air quality
• food insecurity
• poor housing affordability and quality
• ageing infrastructure
• poor health and wellbeing.

“The fund demonstrates how some of the capital’s most important groups can work together to help businesses and communities bounce back from Covid-19 in a rapid time frame,” added Tris Dyson, managing director of Nesta Challenges.

“We are first calling on community groups to come forward with identified issues that have arisen as a result of the pandemic. Importantly, the 10 successful community groups will have the opportunity to co-create solutions with some of the best innovators across the UK, presenting opportunities for learning, sharing and ultimately the creation of successful prototypes.”

The timetable for the Mayor’s Resilience Fund is as follows:

• 14 December 2020 application deadline for community groups to raise issues they need help to support
• January 2021 10 partners selected and challenges announced
• March 2021 30 finalists selected – three innovators per challenge (up to £10,000 awarded at this stage) to further develop their ideas
• June 2021 10 winners will be selected and will receive up to £30,000 to develop their projects in the real world.

For information on the Mayor’s Resilience Fund and to apply to be a community partner, visit: tech.london/resilience

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