The Bright Ideas Fund is now open!

The Bright Ideas Fund supports new community business ideas through the start-up and planning stages with tailored business support and grants of up to £15,000.

In previous rounds, the Bright Ideas Fund has helped communities save heritage assets, such as Radcliffe Market Hall (pictured above) a Victorian indoor market near Manchester, which over the last two years has evolved into a thriving new heart of the town. Run and owned by the community, the market hall is a now home to local independent traders, with regular food and craft events, exhibition and performance space and a space for young people to test bed start up enterprises.

As a Community Benefit Society with an open membership, local residents, traders and the wider community, are engaging with the development and future of the hall.

The Bright Ideas Fund is funded by Power to Change and delivered by Locality, in partnership with Co-operatives UK, the Plunkett Foundation and Groundwork UK.

Applications to the Bright Ideas Fund are open until 30 September. There will be additional funding rounds opening in February and August 2020.