In partnership with the Mayor of London.
The Resilience Fund is the Mayor of London’s £1 million challenge fund to incentivise innovators to address socially impactful issues facing London, help us emerge stronger from COVID-19 and ensure the capital is prepared for future disruptive challenges.
The Fund calls on innovators – tech SMEs, engineers, social enterprises and others – to develop solutions to some of London’s key challenges. Each challenge is sponsored by a Resilience Partner, including local authorities, public agencies, business improvement districts and charities, who will work with the innovator to test and implement their technologies and ideas.
Open call to innovators
Entries to the Mayor’s Resilience Fund are now open! Apply by 1 April 2021.
Innovators: Whether you are an early-stage or fully funded start-up, an engineer, a social enterprise, or a team with a great idea, we want to hear from you and how you would solve one of the challenges identified by the Resilience Partners and the Mayor of London – topics include health and wellbeing, food insecurity, air quality and more.
Why apply?
- Route to market: Connect with potential customers, investors and partners and work with Londoners to refine your product offering
- Validate solutions: Test and validate your solutions directly with market leaders and get the opportunity to secure up to £50,000
- Business support: Access the knowledge, expertise and insights of our partner networks, and attend a programme of expert advice and training
- Raised profile: Increase your brand awareness and profile by taking part in Mayor’s Resilience Fund
How it works
- Working in partnership with Nesta Challenges, the Mayor of London has selected 10 Resilience Partners – a mix of local authorities, public agencies, business improvement districts and charities – who have defined a range of challenges that reflect key issues facing London, which, if solved, can help make the capital a stronger, more robust place to live and work.
- Entry stage: From 22 February to 1 April 2021, we are calling for innovators to submit proposals to solve the challenges identified by the Resilience Partners.
- Delivery Phase 1: In May, up to 40 finalists will be selected from the entries (up to 4 per challenge) and awarded £10k each to develop their solutions over approximately 5 weeks. Resilience Partners will support innovators by leveraging their expertise and relationships with the local community, access to data, access to pilot sites and more. A programme of expert advice and training facilitated access to customers will be available to support innovators in developing their solutions; topics will include service design, user-centred design, pitching support and more.
- Delivery Phase 2: In June, 10 winners (one per challenge) will be selected to implement their ideas and awarded up to £40k each to further develop their solutions between June – September 2021.
We are looking for innovative solutions that can address one of the challenges set by our Resilience Partners, which you can read more about below:
Webinar sessions
Interested in hearing more? Have questions about the challenges?
Register to attend a webinar if you’d like to hear more from the Resilience Partners about their challenge and ask them questions.
The webinars are free and open to anyone that registers.
Click to see which Challenges will be discussed in each session
Entries to the challenges will be open from 23 February 2021 to noon (12pm GMT) 01 April 2021.
Please note, applications are being accepted through the Greater London Authority Open Project System (OPS). You can take a look at the pdf version of the application form here, however only entries made online will be accepted.
Please read this technical guidance document for how to register and apply through GLA-OPS.
If you have any queries, please get in touch at innovation@london.gov.uk
Make sure you have read through the appropriate challenge page, our FAQs, criteria , the funding terms and conditions and privacy policy before you make an entry.
Programme Timeline
Assessment criteria
Applications to all challenges will be assessed against the same five criteria.
Eligibility criteria
Applicants will need to meet certain criteria in order to be eligible to enter.