Culture Change Fund

Welcome to the webpage for the Culture Change Fund. The Humanities Divisional Board has assigned £20,000 to support both bottom-up activities and strategic interventions in faculties.

This is part of our Race Action Plan - visit the Plan's pages to find out more.

The Culture Change Fund for 2020/21 has now closed: information about successful projects will be shared here soon.

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All staff and students in the Humanities Division are welcome to apply to this fund.  

  • Staff: all academics, researchers and professional and support staff on permanent or fixed term, full-time or part-time, contracts are eligible, as long as they are employed exclusively or in part by a faculty from the Humanities Division. Externally-funded researchers can be part of a bid led by faculty staff member/s 

  • Students: all students at undergraduate, Masters and DPhil level who are studying a Humanities course are eligible.  

There are two streams to the Culture Change Fund: the Activity Stream and the Strategy Stream. 

Activity Stream 

Outline:  

  • Bids from staff/student groups, faculty societies and/or individuals. 

  • Bids should show awareness of faculty and/or divisional or university anti-racist work, and their place in it. 

  • The focus of the bid should be on faculty- or Divisional-related, rather than college-related activities. 

  • Cross-faculty activities are desirable, but not essential. 

  • Ideally scalable or replicable.  

  • Projects may be framed around paid or voluntary work, or a combination of the two.

  • Remember to think about all aspects of the work - include promotion costs if running an event, for example.

  • Maximum bid: £250 (more in exceptional circumstances). 

Applications should: 

  • Describe the activity/event 

  • Mention who will be involved.

  • Tell us about the expected change? 

  • Think about how might the results of that change be sustained.

Download the application form here:

  

Strategy Stream 

Outline:  

  • Bids should move the existing anti-racist work in faculties further forward  

  • Bids will support faculties to embed E&D work as part of a sustainable strategy to tackle structural inequalities.  

  • Bids can enable discipline-specific work (unlike the central Diversity Fund)  

  • Bids that are match-funded, or partially funded, through other sources (including the faculty’s own funds) are warmly welcomed. 

  • Maximum bid: £1500 (more in exceptional circumstances). 

Applications should address the following questions (around 250 words per section): 

  • Describe the project you will undertake, and the nature of the intervention you wish to make. 

  • Who will be involved? 

  • How will it build upon the Faculty’s current strategy and activity? 

  • How will you know if the intervention has been successful (how and when are you measuring impact) in the short, medium and long term? 

Download the application form here:

The funding deadline for TT is Friday 1st week: Friday 30 April.

Successful bids will be notified by mid June.  

Bids will be assessed by a panel made up of the Academic Equality and Diversity Lead, the Humanities Divisional Equality and Diversity Officer, student representatives and an ECR representative. Feedback will be given to all unsuccessful bids. 

Successful bids will be notified by mid June, and all awarded funds must be spent by 31 July 2021.

The Fund is designed to support action directed towards changing the culture of faculties, and the Division as a whole. Delivering change in a pandemic has particular challenges, and the Fund has been designed to have light-touch application and reporting processes. 

Successful bids will submit a short report to the Division, and will also provide a short presentation (eg a word document, PowerPoint or message) to the Humanities E&D Open Platform on Teams. 

Bids that use funding as ‘seed funding’ to secure further funds, or to pilot activities that faculties can learn from, are warmly received. The Fund is part of a concerted effort at both Divisional and faculty level to address systemic and historic inequalities: cultural change comes slowly and is built on solid foundations, engages more than it divides and shares successes and challenges.  

If you have any queries, please contact the Divisional Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer.