Table of contents

1. Overview
2. Scope
3. Key dates
4. Accessibility
5. Eligibility
6. What is research and development?
7. Media Cymru Pillars
8. Ideas Lab
9. Project support
10. Subsidy control
11. Minimal Financial Assistance
12. Responsibilities of the applicant
13. Ethics and Responsible Innovation

1. Overview

The Media Cymru Seed Fund enables Wales-based individuals and companies to apply for up to £10,000 to research and develop innovation-driven products, services, and experiences within the media sector. We are looking for ideas that have long-term potential for you or your business beyond the life of the project with Media Cymru.

By the end of the project, you will have the foundations of a business plan, a financial forecast and a pitch deck that will enable you to pitch for funding to investors. You may also be eligible to apply for up to £50,000 of Media Cymru Development Funding to take your idea to the next level.

2. Scope

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

• New media formats and the development of innovative content
• Advanced media production, including the convergence of virtual production and traditional production
• New and inclusive media business models and production processes
• Net zero and the decarbonisation of the screen sector (projects that respond to the findings of the Screen New Deal Transformation Plan for Wales are particularly welcome)
• Immersive storytelling through Extended Reality (XR) technologies, including Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR)
• Video game content and production, including convergence with other media
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other technologies as tools for media production
• Placemaking, including cultural and media tourism
• Bilingual and multilingual production
• News and public information
• Music, voice and audio production, including performance and distribution.

The Seed Fund is not suitable for:

• Generic content development (for example, the development of short films, feature films or television pilots that conform to standard genres and storytelling practices)
• General business development, or
• One-off art commissions

3. Key Dates

• 7 October 2024: Applications open
• 31 October 2024: Applications close at noon: please note, applications will not be accepted after this time
• 6 December 2024: Applicants notified (applicants should note that it can take up to 5 weeks for contracts to be issued)
• 21-23 January 2025: Ideas Lab Workshop (Excelsior Rd, Cardiff CF14 3AT)
• 3 February 2025: Projects begin.

4. Accessibility

If you have any specific requirements that would make the application more accessible to you (such as advice, scribing or reading support) or would like to discuss this application in an alternative format (video or audio formats, audio narration, large font, plain text, or alternative language) please email media.cymru@cardiff.ac.uk or phone 02922 511 434.

5. Eligibility

With all our activity, we are keen to reach the widest audience possible to ensure we hear the best ideas. We recognise that too often R&D investment circulates around networks which are not representative of our wider community in its social and cultural diversity.

We welcome applications from different sizes and types of organisations including micro-businesses, sole-traders and freelancers.

Eligibility criteria:

• Your company or practice is based in Wales.
• You have a clearly articulated R&D idea.
• You work in the Welsh media industry, or your idea directly benefits the Welsh media industry.
• You can dedicate time and effort to complete an R&D project between January and June 2024.
• We will only accept and fund one application per/company/organisation as a project lead.

6. What is Research and Development (R&D)?

Research and Development (R&D) activities are defined as creative and systematic work undertaken to address challenges and to create new or improved products, services, processes or experiences.

In a media context, this could mean exploring, experimenting with or testing new technology such as extended reality, artificial intelligence or virtual production. It could also mean exploring radical, fairer and more planet-friendly ways of working. It could involve testing new methods of producing, distributing and experiencing content, or new ways of reaching audiences and being more sensitive to their needs and demands.

The kind of R&D projects we are looking for are:

• Novel: they will be based on original concepts and hypotheses, not obvious ones.
• Creative: they will take experimental approaches and generate new findings.
• Uncertain: they will begin with a degree of uncertainty about the final outcomes.
• Systematic: they will be based on a planned and budgeted approach.
• Transferable: they will generate results that can be reproduced to gain wider benefits.

7. Media Cymru Pillars

We are keen to support projects that address some, or all, of our four strategic pillars: Green, Fair, Global, Growth.

The Media Cymru programme strategic pillars are:

• Green – reducing the environmental impact of the sector
• Fair – creating a fair, equal and diverse sector
• Global – increasing international collaborations
• Growth – driving growth and productivity through R&D.

8. Ideas Lab

All successful Seed Fund applicants are required to attend a three-day Ideas Lab workshop taking place in Cardiff between Tuesday 21 and Thursday 23 January 2025. Attendance is mandatory and all applicants will need to attend to secure funding for seed projects. The workshop is led by PDR International Centre for Design and Research and The Alacrity Foundation UK.

The course will cover:

• Understanding R&D and how to apply it to an idea
• The value of iterative testing, collaboration and user centred design
• Business development and entrepreneurship
• Encouraging thinking around how to launch a product and generate public/private funding

On completion, participants will understand how to translate ideas into innovative proposals that incorporate the needs of end users.

A bursary of £500 will be provided to all attendees of the Ideas Lab workshop, in addition to the funding awarded for your seed project.

9. Project support

If successful, participants will benefit from three mandatory sessions (totaling six hours), plus an optional session (two hours) with world leading design consultancy and applied research facility PDR. These sessions will be to support you on your innovation journey and are based around established methodology for developing an approach to R&D projects:

Session one: Challenge and plan
Session two: Making sense of research data
Session three: Findings – Feasibility and next steps

There will also be three mandatory support sessions (totalling six hours) from The Alacrity Foundation providing business development and commercialisation expertise to projects.

Where appropriate, the Media Cymru team will seek to supplement this by drawing on experience from the Media Cymru Innovation Spaces project.

Projects will also be supported by a Producer from Media Cymru.

10. Subsidy control

A subsidy is where a public authority provides support to an enterprise that gives an enterprise an economic advantage. Subsidies that are awarded, in compliance with the Subsidy Control Act 2022, provide a legitimate way for public funding to support economic activity.

Media Cymru Seed Fund support is offered as a Minimal Financial Assistance (MFA) Subsidy, in the form of a cash grant from Cardiff University. It will also include the cash grant equivalent support value from PDR and Alacrity Foundation and the £500 bursary for mandatory attendance on the Ideas Lab course. The total MFA value of the grant and support is up to £15,000.

11. Minimal Financial Assistance

Under MFA rules, public authorities can award up to £315,000 of MFA subsidy to an enterprise over an ‘applicable period’ of three financial years. This ‘applicable period’ is:

the elapsed part of the current financial year ending 30 March (i.e., from April) and

the two financial years immediately preceding the current financial year.

In the application you will be asked to declare your eligibility to receive funding via the MFA route. To establish your eligibility, we require you to confirm that the addition of our grant funding does not exceed your £315,000 limit for MFA across the ‘applicable period’ of three financial years.

When assessing the previous assistance that you may have received over the applicable period, please include the following:

• De Minimus Aid
• Small Amounts of Financial Assistance (SAFA) given as Special Drawing Rights (SDR) Services of Public Economic Interest (SPEI) Financial Assistance
• Minimal Financial Assistance

Prior award or notification letters from public authorities should clearly state the basis and date of award. If in doubt, you should contact the public authority granting the assistance to confirm its nature. You do not need to include assistance granted on a different basis for example a grant made under the EU State Aid General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER).

When assessing MFA, you must include all organisations in your group structure that operate under ‘common control’. Further details on this can be found in Annex 1 of the Statutory Guidance  for the UK Subsidy Control Act 2022, para 15.40-15.46, pp. 174-176.

If you are unsure about your obligations under the Subsidy Control Act 2022, you can find further information in the Statutory Guidance, Chapter 7.   You may also wish to review the wider guidance materials available from the Welsh Government Subsidy Control Unit, or take independent legal advice.  Cardiff University is unable to advise on individual eligibility or legal obligations.

12. Responsibilities of the applicant

While we encourage collaborations, each project application must be led by one person or organisation. Depending on organisational type, the applicant must be legally entitled to work in the UK or be a UK-registered business or charity.

The lead applicant is responsible for:

• Acting as the ‘contractual lead’ or signatory to the Media Cymru Grant Agreement.
• Leading, managing and delivering the project in accordance with the agreed proposal and budget.
• Claiming and receiving grant funding and keeping appropriate financial records of all expenditure.
• Acting as the point of contact for reporting and monitoring on the project, liaising regularly with a dedicated Media Cymru team member.

Where the project is collaborative, and includes other co-applicants, the applicant will also be responsible for:

• Putting in place any necessary sub-contracting or collaboration agreements with co-applicants.
• Distributing funding to co-applicants in accordance with the agreed project budget.

The lead applicant will be required to provide assurance that they have a business bank account, can manage the cash flow requirements of their projects, and have appropriate financial processes in place to deliver projects in accordance with our funding terms and conditions.

Where a project is formed of a Consortium of organisations, all collaborating organisations (or ‘co-applicants’) must be named in the project proposal.

We will perform due diligence checks on organisations as part of our project feasibility assessments. Outcomes are considered against the scale of funds requested and the duration of project activities. The applicant and co-applicants must be willing to submit supporting documents on request.

Any applicant must be eligible to receive funding in line with the Subsidy Control Act 2022 at the time we confirm you will be awarded funding.

Should you have any queries around managing finances, please contact media.cymru@cardiff.ac.uk and we will be happy to provide guidance.

13. Ethics and Responsible Innovation

Media Cymru adheres to the highest possible standards when it comes to research ethics. We have some fundamental values that guide our procedures, directly aligned with the main objectives of Media Cymru. Our commitment to high ethical standards also seeks to inform, foster and support the R&D activities planned and developed by our funded projects. Following UKRI’s Responsible Innovation Framework, our assessment panels will consider the ethical impact of the proposed R&D project (including potentially unintended consequences). Please ensure that you take ethical considerations into account in your application, particularly when demonstrating the potential economic, social, cultural and environmental impact of the proposed R&D project.