Funding Opportunities
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Make It Happen Fund
What is available: 20 awards of £1,500 each
Who can apply: Alumni within 3 years of graduation
Read about the 2025/26 awardees here
The Make It Happen Fund gives our most recent graduates access to a competitive pot of seed funding to support their career goals and ambitions.
The fund supports a wide range of early-stage development activity in areas such as: training, networking, testing ideas, starting up companies, staging pop-up events or digital performances, and forming new collaborations.
The fund is currently closed and will reopen for applications in early summer.
Stay up to date with the Make It Happen Fund by subscribing to the CEDO newsletter
Student Ideas Fund
What is available: Up to two £1,000 prizes per month during term time
Who can apply: All current students (undergraduate & postgraduate)
The Student Ideas Fund supports RCS students to develop new ideas outside of their coursework. It helps you:
- Explore creative ideas
- Make or test your own work
- Develop career or business ideas
- Take early steps toward a creative enterprise or project
Ideas can be big or small, artistic, social, community-based, or career-focused. The important thing is that you are learning something new, trying something different, or developing skills and your portfolio.
CEDOxConverge Ideas Fund
What is available: Up to 5 awards of £1,000 each
Who can apply: All current students (undergraduate & postgraduate)
Online Info session: 4 February 12:00-13:00 – Click here to join (Meeting ID: 350 654 737 450 73 / Passcode: co2wB3jQ)
The CEDOxConverge Ideas Fund is a one-off funding opportunity for RCS students to explore an early creative idea with the potential to grow into a future creative company or charity.
Designed for experimentation, the fund supports first steps such as testing ideas, prototyping creative work, running pop-up events, or sharing work-in-progress. You don’t need business experience, a registered company, or a fully formed proposal — just curiosity, willingness to learn, and an idea you want to explore.
Up to five awards of £1,000 are available, alongside wraparound mentoring and support from the Creative Enterprise Development Office (CEDO) and the Converge team, including guidance on next steps and future funding.
Open to current RCS undergraduate and postgraduate students leading a project or a company/charity that is pre-registration or in its first six months of trading.
Application Deadline: Thursday 12 February 2026 at 17:00.
