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COLLABORATE: SAFER SPACES Commission

Aim

We are delighted to announce that applications for our final round of the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund are now open.

COLLABORATE: SAFER SPACES Commission offers the opportunity for four teams to receive support and funding to develop collaborative ideas around the theme of ‘Safer Spaces’, as part of the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund, supported by Westfield Stratford City, and co-funded by Foundation for Future London.

Four shortlisted teams will receive up to £50k each in flexible funding, part of which will be a development grant. The commission will provide the time and space to develop, test and embed collaborative work alongside partners, with wraparound co-designed support across each stage of programme development. Teams will work in partnership with Foundation for Future London throughout this process, developing sustainable collaborative approaches together, supporting project development away from the restrictions of rigid applications.

In 2024, we launched a new Empowering Safer Spaces campaign, inviting young people, artists, creatives, community groups and others in East London to take part in a conversation about what ‘Safer Spaces’ mean to East London’s under-resourced and marginalised communities. The campaign has included community consultation, an FOI request to London borough councils, a young people’s language workshop, a consumer survey and a panel event to share lessons learned and support networking.

In response to feedback and input from our grantees, our Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund Community Grant Panel and our Empowering Safer Spaces consultation, we are now seeking to commission new sustainable partner collaborations across East London to support more connected responses to this work.

At Foundation for Future London, we work to empower East London communities. A key part of this work has been supporting collaborations, with equitable partnership as a core criterion across the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund.

This new round of commissions goes further by providing flexible funding and wrap-around support to organisations and networks, helping them deepen the impact and resilience of their collaborative work.

About the Commissions

The COLLABORATE: SAFER SPACES Commissions will support creative, sustainable, interdisciplinary and diverse-led grassroots collaborations seeking to influence and achieve local change around the theme of ‘Safer Spaces’.

Partner collaborations will receive:

  • Shortlisted teams will be guaranteed up to £50k in flexible funding. This includes an early-stage development grant, to provide the time and space to develop, test and embed your collaborative work alongside partners away from the restrictions of rigid applications.
  • Wraparound co-designed support from the Foundation and our partners across each stage of your programme’s development to help shape plans and build your organisations’ and/or network’s collaborative capabilities.
  • Ongoing strategic support from the Foundation to support collaboration opportunities between the networks/partnerships to work towards shared outcomes beyond the life of the grant. The use and management of this support will be co-designed with the partners to ensure that it meets your needs.
  • Access funding support – small grants available to individual and micro-organisations to remove barriers to partnership and application development.

For further information about this new approach and what to expect from partnering with us, read this blog from our Grants and Programme Manager.

What Do We Mean by ‘Safer Spaces’?

We expect all funded collaborations to focus on the theme of ‘Safer Spaces’, but we want communities to define what this means to them. We believe that those with lived experience are best placed to understand what safety looks like in their own contexts.

Through our 2024 campaign, including consultation with 40 grassroots community organisations and a survey of over 1,000 Londoners, we learned that 48% of Londoners feel unsafe in community spaces. However, we also discovered that different communities have varying definitions and priorities when it comes to creating safety. Therefore, we encourage collaborative approaches that respond to locally identified needs rather than prescribing a rigid definition.

This might include (but not limited to) work addressing:

  • Safe spaces for migrants and refugees – creating welcoming environments free from discrimination and fear.
  • LGBTQ+ safety and inclusion – fostering communities where people can express their authentic selves.
  • Support for care leavers – building networks of safety and belonging for young people transitioning from care.
  • Health and wellbeing – ensuring access to culturally appropriate and non-discriminatory services.
  • Economic safety – supporting pathways to economic stability e.g. employment and education.
  • Digital safety – protecting communities from online harassment and ensuring digital inclusion
  • Environmental and climate – addressing environmental hazards and climate impacts that disproportionately affect marginalised communities.
  • Public realm – making streets, parks, and public spaces more welcoming.

The key is that your collaboration should be community-led and intersectoral, bringing together different perspectives and expertise to build sustainable approaches to ensure individuals feel secure and supported within their communities.

We want to support communities in defining, protecting, nurturing and building safer spaces that work for them, celebrating and strengthening their local cultural assets and breaking down silos between different sectors and services.

What We’re Looking For

We believe collaboration is a powerful tool for communities to work together, stimulate innovation, share ideas, build knowledge, develop new skills and foster the relationships and resilience our sector needs to navigate the challenges ahead.

Funding resources are getting scarcer, and we continue to see greater competition for funding. We can make a greater impact and achieve better outcomes for people by working in partnership. Working together, we can ease some of the pressures across the sector and develop capacity for collaboration to drive collective action, amplifying efforts to address shared challenges and outcomes.

COLLABORATE aims to achieve exactly that – to build and sustain equitable partnerships and networks at different scales, advocate and strengthen collective voices, build consortiums across siloes and share risks, ideas, skills and resources.

We are offering core financial support to collaborations led by diverse-led grassroots organisations across Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest, to support them in developing resilient partnerships addressing the theme of ‘Safer Spaces’.

While we recommend you address our Outcomes Framework (see Appendix), there are no set outcomes or deliverables for this fund. The main focus is on leveraging collaboration to enable our grantees to drive forward their goals around ‘Safe Spaces’, which they are less likely to achieve on their own.

Funding can be used to fund direct delivery of services and individual projects, but we also expect a large percentage to be allocated to expand your collaborations’ capacity.

Here are some examples of what we could fund:

Community Organising & Advocacy

  • Build community organising capacity, advocacy (give collective voice to local issues that matter) and strengthen leadership across networks.
  • Support people with lived experience to influence programmes and policy.
  • Building power, knowledge and engagement with local decision-makers, larger institutional partners and stakeholders.

Extra Capacity & Skills Development

  • Improve knowledge, training and skills e.g. governance, fundraising, partnership development, business planning, public procurement, networking etc.
  • Provision of sector-wide professional development support.
  • Wellbeing and resilience support to sustain collaborative work longer term.

Partnership & Network Development

  • Strategic partnership development
  • Develop or establish new networks to continue collaborating and supporting each other beyond the programme.
  • Space to network, share knowledge, learnings, resources and connect with other partners around funding, business development, partnerships and networking.

Innovation & Development

  • Trial new ideas to stimulate innovative thinking that addresses Safer Spaces issues across our communities’ local spaces.
  • Support the development of relational and participatory work locally, allowing communities to lead through new forms of engagement.
  • Collective and innovative approaches to evaluation and/or fundraising

What’s Different About This Process

We have made some changes to our application process to minimise the demands on applicants’ time. This is a new approach, and we are learning – we expect this process to evolve as we work together.

The two-stage process outlined below will be flexible to help teams clarify plans, strengthen collaboration, address concerns and problem solve together.

We will aim to support partnership building across both stages to avoid duplication and embed cross-sector and cross-borough partnership opportunities to drive change around the ‘Safer Spaces’ theme.

STAGE ONE: Complete your EOI

1) Find out what to expect and if this programme is right for you.

Make sure to check the eligibility before applying and attend a Collaboration ‘Cuppa’ if you have any questions for us.

To help connect applicants with other interested individuals and organisations, we have started a partner-finding form. Let others know what type of partner you would like to meet or what you might be able to offer a potential partnership:

COLLABORATE : SAFER SPACES – PARTNER-FINDING FORM

We will also be hosting an informal networking drop-in/social on Wed 9 July at 10am-12pm for organisations wanting to strengthen existing partnerships or meet new collaborators.

2) Tell us about your collaboration via the online portal. You do NOT need to have a full project plan or budget at this stage. The initial EOI seeks to understand your team’s strengths, opportunities, ambitions and initial collaborative engagement plans.

Please also let us know how you feel the Foundation may be able to help partner with you.

STAGE TWO: Collaborative Co-Missioning & Programme Delivery

1) Applications will be reviewed by our Community Grant Panel

Four shortlisted teams will be guaranteed funding of up to £50k and invited to enter into a more collaborative co-missioning process alongside the Foundation.

This co-missioning approach, outlined below, means we’ll work alongside partners to collaboratively shape and refine your programme towards shared outcomes, rather than asking you to deliver a pre-set proposal. This is an opportunity for the Foundation to get a better understanding of your team and how we might be able to support you longer term. We are hoping that this process allows for greater flexibility, shared decision-making, and programmes that can evolve more mutually to best meet community needs.

2) £5k development grant provided to support initial collaborative engagement and partnership building

Over a two-month period, we expect to spend 3-5 days with you and your team (online and in-person) to understand your collaboration in detail, prior to agreeing the scale of funding for your programme of work. Support at each stage is intended to be flexible and tailored to suit the needs of each partner and may include a mix of informal chats, planning sessions, workshops, site visits, mentoring, presentations, networking and other formats.

To support shortlisted projects develop their work collaboratively, the Foundation will co-develop a peer-led programme of capacity building. We will also use this as a chance to explore the potential to network, collaborate, share resources, share skills and deepen impact and partnerships with other shortlisted teams and our wider network.

3) The Foundation will provide ongoing strategic support

The use and management of this support will be co-designed with partners to ensure it meets their needs and enhances ongoing collaboration between funded partners to work towards shared outcomes beyond the life of the grant. Where relevant, the Foundation will act as an active partner/ally and critical friend throughout this process, co-producing outputs alongside you, delivering co-evaluation across the cohort, and taking on some of the collaborative risk to strengthen partnerships and deepen impact.

Further details of our enhanced partnership support will be provided to shortlisted applications.

Eligibility

To apply, you should:

  • Be a diverse-led not-for-profit organisation that is formally constituted i.e. has a signed governing document in the group’s name. This includes unincorporated associations and community groups, registered charities, social enterprises, Community Interest Companies (CICs), Charitable Incorporated Organisations (CIOs), companies limited-by-guarantee and faith groups where there is a clear community focus and the project does not promote a particular religious view.
  • Have an annual organisational turnover under £1.5m.
  • Be connected with and meet the needs of the local communities in the London Boroughs of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.
  • Demonstrate a collaborative and sustainable approach.
  • Have a comprehensive safeguarding policy in place if working with children and young people under the age of 18 or vulnerable adult.
  • Have a commitment to, or are working towards, London Living Wage.

Please NOTE: We welcome larger organisations, for-profits, institutions, Councils’ universities etc to support as part of collaborative teams. If you are not eligible to apply but are still interested in supporting the process, please get in touch to discuss.

Download the full application information

Photo credit: Chris Baker

At a glance

How to apply

The deadline to complete the Expression of Interest is Monday 18 August 2025 at 2pm. 

Applications will be assessed by our Community Grant Panel on their alignment with sustainability, engagement and collaborative impact.

We do not expect you to have a full plan at this stage. Applications will be shortlisted based on their collaborative potential demonstrated via the initial engagement plan, ensuring an inclusive and balanced spread across boroughs, activities and outcomes.

Due to expected strong demand, we will prioritise projects where our funding is likely to make the biggest difference, such as:

  • Projects not in receipt of statutory funding
  • Projects delivered by diverse-led grassroots organisations
  • Organisations that have not previously received Foundation support

If you are not shortlisted, we still hope to connect you with our Empowering Safer Spaces work as it develops.

Apply Now

To apply, please use our grant management software Flexigrant for online applications:

foundationforfuturelondon.flexigrant.com

We estimate this will take 3-4 hours for your team to complete. Please be sure to check eligibility BEFORE starting your application. See our FAQs for full details.

There is also an option to submit a short video (e.g. no longer than 2 minutes). If you choose this option, please upload an audio/video format (under 20 Mb) or include a link to your submission as a URL link to a video-hosting platform such as YouTube or Vimeo. All videos should answer EOI questions contained on the online form.

If you have not applied to the Foundation previously, we recommend that you discuss your project with a staff member before applying to assess whether you are eligible.

Accessibility Format

We recognise discrimination is an issue that impacts much of our society, and we are proud to be a part of a community that counters this at any given opportunity.  As a result, we actively encourage applications from people of all faiths, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, economic circumstances, and backgrounds.

If you require adjustments (e.g. information about this Fund in a different format) or access support to take part in the application process, contact us to discuss further.

If you need any of the, please contact us at grants@future.london

Access Bursaries

We are committed to making our funding application process as accessible to as many people as possible and want to ensure there aren’t unnecessary barriers to applying.

Collaboration doesn’t just happen at a grant scale. We know that individuals, freelancers and micro-organisations often need more support building partnerships, and there might still be barriers for those wanting to apply as part of a collaborative team.

If you have identified any access barriers that might inhibit you from developing an application or partnering with other organisations, please contact us at grants@future.london.

We can offer small grants (generally up to £200) to support access needs. The support we can offer would be guided by what you need, but could include admin support, BSL interpreter, notetaker or support worker.

To apply for the access bursary, please contact us by Tuesday 8 July (extended from 1 July). There is a limited pot of access support, which will be made available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Supporting Your Application

We will be hosting a series of informal chats and networking events where our Grants and Programme Manager, Ashton Mullins, will be on hand (online & in-person) to answer any questions you may have about applying.

Join a Collaboration ‘Cuppa’

  • Tuesday 15 July, 10am to 12pm ONLINE
  • Tuesday 22 July, 10am to 12pm ONLINE
  • Wednesday 5 August, 10am to 12pm ONLINE
  • Tuesday 12 August, 10am to 12pm ONLINE

Informal Drop-in & Networking Events

  • Wednesday 9 July, 10am to 12pm IN PERSON
  • Thursday 31 July 2025 10am-12pm. The Source, Theatre Square, London E15 1BX. IN PERSON 

Questions?

We have compiled a list of FAQs to address a wide range of common questions and concerns. We will be keeping this document up to date as queries are raised during and after our information session.

COLLABORATE : SAFER SPACES – FAQs

We strongly encourage all applicants to review this resource before submitting their application.

Appendix A: What do we mean by….

 

 ‘A collaboration’

For the purposes of this call out, we are referring to a collaboration as one that is led-by a diverse-led organisation.

The organisation leading the collaboration should be based in Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Newham or Waltham Forest and have an annual turnover under £1.5m.

If the collaboration, consortium or network already exists, the lead partner should be involved initially with the project and have taken a key role in developing and leading the work to date.

We expect a collaboration to include a range of partner organisations or at least have the ambition to engage a range of other organisations. There should be a minimum of three organisations in your initial EOI, including your organisation.

We will support collaborations demonstrating a commitment to equitable partnership and are working together to support people with direct experience of the funding theme of Safer Spaces.

‘Diverse-Led’

The Foundation aims to prioritise support to organisations that are led by people from marginalised communities and work that is developed and delivered with people and communities who are most underrepresented to recognise the urgent need to address the historical power imbalance between who leads, creates and makes work.

As part of your application, we ask you to state whether your organisation or project team identifies as ‘diverse-led’.

Please ONLY select ‘diverse-led’ where 75% of your organisation’s Board/Management Committee and more than 50% of senior staff are people from the community or communities that you serve or have lived experience of the issues that your organisation is tackling.

If your organisation serves more than one marginalised community, then the percentage of your Board and staff could also be from more than one community.

This includes: BPOC/Black, LGBTQ+, refugee/immigrant, working class, disabled and others.

Appendix B: Outcomes Framework

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