Event Outcome Grant Capture: Pathways to Bidding – Learning with/from others – Julie Doyle | 17 June 2025 10-11.45 am at Grand Parade, G4

Pathways to Bidding Event Outcomes – Top Tips for Bidding and Support Needs

Many thanks to all of those who attended the Pathways to Bidding: Learning with/from Others Event on 17 June 2025. We heard from a range of SAM staff about their grant experiences and successes, across diverse funders such as National Trust, AHRC and Arts Council, and ranging from funding of a £1,000 up to £350,000. Huge thanks to Sue Breakell, Emma Collins, Lance Dann, Paul Sermon and Mark Wells  for sharing their work with us. Below are some top tips for preparing and writing a bid that were generously shared by the presenters, as well as a list of support needs identified by the group of staff who attended the event. These support needs will be used to help create more tailored grant support sessions for SAM staff in the academic year 2025-26, in my role as Grant Capture Lead (Julie Doyle).

Top Tips for Bidding:

Building your capacity

• Get involved in reviewing bids for external funders, such as AHRC, ESRC, Leverhulme, and others.

• Work in collaboration with others – be part of a bid that someone else is leading on

• Go slow and steady – build your grant experience through internal fund applications first

• Having an industry background can help you bring project partners into grants for mutually beneficial research

• Build up your academic networks and non-academic partners (this takes time)

Preparing a bid

• Get the ‘hook’ of the project – make it clear from the beginning what is the focus

• Preparing for and writing bids takes time, so factor this in

• Use the expertise of Bid Support, Laura Shockley, and SAM Knowledge Exchange Manager, Stuart Hedley

Dealing with failures

• Expect failure as part of the process

Grant Support Needs for Staff:

Grant Information

• General information about how to get started with grant bidding and support available

• Understanding the time it takes to write a bid/clarity on time for bidding in SR4R

• Links to where internal and external grants are outside of normal areas

Idea generation

• 1-1 talk through ideas

Bid preparation

• Support with AHRC bid

• Articulating impact in a bid

• Feedback on applications

• More school-based research support

• Understanding what time commitment/allocation means within a bid

Post bid application

• Dealing with rejection and re-building

Posted on behalf of

Julie Doyle

Professor of Media and Communication  – Grant Capture Lead
School of Art and Media, University of Brighton