Funding Big Ideas for Real Impact

Absolutely — and we want to hear from you. You do not need to be a researcher or have a project idea to submit an expression of interest. If you want to get involved in shaping a project, tell us a little about yourself and we will do our best to connect you with a team.

No. If you are unsure about your team, get in touch — we can still help connect you with collaborators before the 7th August deadline.

Community organisations, charities, and voluntary sector partners are warmly encouraged to get involved — but the lead applicant must be an academic employee at an eligible UK institution. If you are from a community organisation and want to find a research partner to lead an application, get in touch and we can help make introductions.

No — the fund is open to projects from across the UK. However, we will give special consideration to projects that benefit people living with dementia in the North East of England and North Cumbria.

Co-production means that people with lived experience of dementia are genuine partners in shaping the project — not just consulted or recruited as participants. This includes being involved in the design, delivery, and evaluation of the work. It is one of our most important assessment criteria. We will be sharing resources to help you think through what this means in practice.

Please see our Co-production Resource for more guidance.

We are open to a wide range of digital technologies — from apps and wearables to smart home devices, assistive tools, and data platforms. The key question is whether it has the potential to support independence for people living with dementia in their own homes.

Yes. The £100,000 figure is a maximum total project budget. We welcome applications for smaller amounts, and your budget should be proportionate to what you are actually doing.

FEC stands for Full Economic Cost — a standard way of calculating the true cost of a research project, including staff time, overheads, and other expenses. UKRI funds projects at 80% of FEC, which means your institution contributes the remaining 20%.

For example, on a maximum £100,000 project, TEDI would fund £80,000 and your institution would fund the remaining £20,000.

Our budget guidance resource explains this in more detail.

[UKRI explaination of FEC]

Yes, but each application must be for a distinct project with its own team and aims.

All applications go through a two-stage review process designed to bring together expert knowledge and the perspectives of people living with dementia.

In the first stage, a review panel of experts will independently score every application against our five assessment criteria before the panel meets. The panel brings together expertise spanning primary care, digital technology, social science, design, community and voluntary sector practice, and dementia research. Panel members will declare any conflicts of interest and will not score applications where a conflict exists.

In the second stage, a shortlist of the strongest applications will be reviewed by a lived experience panel — a small group of people living with dementia, recruited from community groups across the North East and North Cumbria. This is a closely facilitated half-day session, and the lived experience panel will have the final say in which projects are funded. Their feedback is mapped directly to the assessment criteria.

We aim to communicate decisions to all applicants by 25th September 2026. All applicants will feedback on their application regardless of outcome.

We take the handling of your ideas seriously. While submitting an expression of interest to TEDI does not in itself transfer any intellectual property rights to Northumbria University or any partner organisation, we want to be transparent about how ideas are used once received.

The purpose of the Innovation Fund is to connect ideas with the right people to help develop them. This means your expression of interest will be read by the TEDI review panel, and if taken forward, your idea may be shared through our matchmaking process to help identify suitable academic, community, or industry partners. We will endeavour to keep you informed at each stage of this process and will aim to involve you in decisions about how your idea is shared before that happens.

If you have concerns about a particularly sensitive idea, we would encourage you to get in touch with us before submitting — we are happy to talk through how the process works and answer any questions.

Yes. If you are a researcher, designer, or technology company looking to develop or test an idea, we can help connect you with carers, family members, and people living with dementia who can contribute their experience as partners in your project. Lived experience isn't an add-on — it's central to what the Innovation Fund is trying to achieve.