Media Cymru Seed Fund – United Kingdom

The Innovation Pipeline is a series of targeted funding rounds and training opportunities designed to develop companies and individuals within the media sector in the Cardiff Capital Region and across Wales.

The aim is to increase their capacity to carry out meaningful research, development and innovation (R&D). This can be from early-stage development through to scale up activity, to result in more ideas, diversity and growth to the industry.

Scope

• They’re particularly interested in applications regarding:
  • New media formats and innovative new ways of creating content
  • Virtual production (including the convergence of virtual production and traditional production)
  • Immersive storytelling through Extended Reality (XR) technologies, including Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR)
  • Innovation in game content production (including convergence with other media)
  • The ethical use of Artificial Intelligence in media and content production
  • Placemaking and cultural/ media tourism
  • New and inclusive media business models and production processes
  • Sustainable solutions to the challenges of net zero and the decarbonisation of the screen sector, particularly those that respond to the findings of the recent Screen New Deal Transformation Plan for Wales
  • Bilingual production
  • New approaches to delivering news and public information.
• They’re also keen to support projects that address some or all of the four strategic pillars: Green, Fair, Global, Growth.

Eligibility Criteria

• With all the activity they are keen to reach the widest audience possible to make sure they hear the best ideas. They recognise that too often R&D investment circulates around networks which are not representative of the wider community in its social and cultural diversity. They aim to change that pattern and are working within the organisation and in the wider sector to address these structural imbalances. They also hope to inspire transformative and inclusive lines of R&D that will challenge existing ways of producing and thinking.
• They welcome applications from different sizes and types of organisation including micro-businesses, sole traders, freelancers and partnerships.
• You are eligible if:
• You are based in Wales
• You have a Research and Development (R&D) idea
• You are in the media industry or your idea directly benefits the media industry
• You are able to dedicate time and effort to complete a R&D project between 17th June and 7th October 2024.

Ineligible

• The Seed Fund is not suitable for:
  • Generic content creation (for example, the standard development of short films, plays, live music events, feature films and television pilots)
  • General business development
  • One-off art commissions.

Fir more information, visit Media Cymru.