Collaboration & Innovation Awards

C&I Awards is open only to current members of the Mental Health Platform (MHP). The lead applicant must be:

• MHP researcher at any career stage, including Early Career Researchers, and researchers with lived experience.
• MHP Associate Member

The lead applicant is the individual with primary responsibility for coordinating the project and acting as the main point of contact with the MHP.

As collaborative awards, at least one co-lead applicant or collaborator must be associated with another Hub. We encourage the parties involved to co-lead the project instead of selecting only one lead. However, it’s not a requirement.

In Round 3, we also encourage applicants to consider co-leads or collaborators who are creative practitioners to support the work.

Industry partners involved in applications for this award must be part of the MHP Industry Alliance. 

The project must: 

• Connect at least two of the Hubs. Leads of the Hubs involved must provide a letter of support to the project.
• Address one of the Round 3 creative themes described below. (See next section.)
• Be completed by 31 December 2028. Projects are expected to start within 6 months of the decision being made.
• For Round 3, have a proposed budget between £10,000 - £50,000 (100% FEC, cost to funder) and exclude ineligible costs.
• Include PPIE in all stages of the project, including its design.

The award aims to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and generate real-world impact through innovative and inclusive research. 

Projects in Round 3 should be clearly creative, collaborative across Hubs, and focused on severe mental illness. They should fit one of the following three creative-focused themes, and demonstrate why the proposed approach is a good fit for the MHP C&I Awards.

• ​​​​Creative methods for discovery – to generate new knowledge, data or understanding of severe mental illness 
• ​​Creative co-production – to develop or test new ways of working collaboratively across research, creative practice and lived experience
• ​​Creative translation & communication – to use creative approaches to communicate research, engage audiences or translate existing knowledge into practice.

Potential projects could use film, visual arts, storytelling, performance, design or digital media to explore new insights into severe mental illness, develop new approaches to co-production, or communicate existing research in more engaging and accessible ways. 

For example, projects could co-produce digital stories with people with lived experience, use creative methods to explore experiences that are difficult to capture through conventional research, or transform existing research findings into films, performances or exhibitions designed to engage specific audiences.

The proposed budget is between £10,000- £50,000 (100% FEC, cost to funder) and must exclude ineligible costs. 

Eligible costs:  

• Direct Project Costs: 100% directly incurred and directly allocated project costs can be claimed, including staff time, travel and subsistence on individual projects.
• Costs of networking activities and events, engagement and knowledge exchange, including travel and subsistence.
• Equipment valued < £10,000. 

Ineligible costs:   

• Duplication of other sources of funding that would be more appropriate for the activity to be funded.
• Indirect or estates costs at the research organisation.
• Any costs relating to Intellectual Property protection including but not limited to registering, maintaining, or supporting patents or property rights.
• Equipment valued ≥ £10,000.
• Undergraduate or postgraduate activities or training, or core PhD training including tuition or bench fees.
• Contributions to existing knowledge transfer partnerships.
• The salary costs of investigators and staff employed on existing funded Hub awards are also not eligible for inclusion. 

New rounds will be announced internally through the shared MHP Teams and email dissemination. 

Round 1 - Closed

Round 2 - Closed

Round 3 (creative theme) – Launch September 2026

Round 4 – Launch January 2027

Exceptionally, emerging opportunities may be identified by the Leadership team and proposals may be invited for submission between funding rounds if offering significant strategic value to the MHP. Projects may be invited outside the standard funding cycles but will go through the same review process depending on their budget. 

Lead applicants must submit a completed application form with all required supporting documentation by email to the Mental Health Platform Coordinating Team.

Applications must be submitted by the published deadline to mhp@ed.ac.uk. Applications received after the deadline will not be accepted.

Please save your application form using the following file naming convention: YYYY MHP CandI Awards Full Name (for example: 2026 MHP CandI Awards Jane Smith)

All application materials, including the application form and supporting documentation, must be merged into a single PDF file (maximum total file size 25MB) and submitted by email with the subject line: “MHP C&I Awards Application”

The application form can be downloaded from this page below.

Supporting documentation

Supporting documentation must be included within the single merged PDF submission and must comply with the page limits set out below.

1. Delivery Plan, Timeline and Data Management (max 2 pages): Describe the project objectives, methodology, creative approach, timeline and risk management. Explain how the project builds on previous work, uses the research environment and infrastructure, and will manage the cross-hub collaboration. You may provide up to three examples of previous work, which might include publications, websites, videos or other media. Please use those examples in support of your ability to deliver the activity described. Linked videos should ideally not exceed 10 minutes in total length. 

   Please explain the novelty of the proposed work and what will become possible through this collaboration that would not otherwise be achievable. Include a brief data management section covering the type of data generated, collection, storage, sharing and compliance with the MHP Data Sharing Policy, including deposition in the DATAMIND Trusted Research Environment where applicable. 

    

2. Budget Plan (max 1 page): This section should outline a clear, realistic, justified and compliant project budget. Your total project cost must remain within the funding limit and reflect only eligible costs. Refer to the MHP website for more information. 

    

3. CV (max 2 pages) for each of the project leads, co-leads and collaborators using the UKRI format.

    

4. List of publications/outputs (1 page each) for each of the project leads, co-leads and collaborators For creative practitioners, selected outputs (up to five), can include exhibitions, performances, films, public engagement, reports, policy outputs and publications – please provide links where possible. Linked videos should ideally not exceed 10 minutes in total length.

    

5. Letters of support from Hub leads & collaborators (1–2 pages each) Letters of support are required from all Hub leads and collaborators involved in the project, and from industry partners where applicable. Co-leads do not need to submit letters of support. Letters must clearly describe the level of commitment and nature of the contribution. 

   Please note: Letters from collaborators not already part of the MHP must also confirm that they have read and agreed to the MHP Privacy Policy and the use of their data. 

   Where applications are submitted under the MRC Industry Collaboration Framework, industry letters must follow the published guidance.

The Coordinating team will assess if candidates’ applications are complete, meet the minimum eligibility criteria. 

All applications in Round 3 will follow the same one-stage assessment process. The Review Committee will review and score each eligible application against the criteria below and make funding recommendations.

The MHP Coordinating Team may seek additional specialist advice where needed, for example on creative practice, lived experience, technical feasibility, safeguarding, ethics, data or industry collaboration.

Proposals will be evaluated based on the following three key criteria:

1. Team Strength, Collaboration and Delivery Environment (25%)
2. Impact and Strategic alignment (25%) 
3. Creative Quality, Innovation and Delivery (50%)

Please download and read the Review process and scoring criteria document to learn more detail about the scoring system. Scroll down this page to download the Review process and scoring criteria document on this page below.

The C&I are collaborative awards, so at least one co-lead applicant or collaborator must be associated with another Hub than the lead applicant. We encourage the parties involved to co-lead the project instead of selecting only one lead. However, it’s not a requirement. 

Co-lead is an individual who shares intellectual leadership and responsibility for the design, delivery and management of the project. They may come from academic, clinical, creative or lived experience backgrounds, where eligible. 

Collaborator is an individual who contributes specialist expertise, creative practice, lived experience, resources or project activities, but does not share overall responsibility for project leadership or management. 

We encourage applicants to consider whether involvement from industry partners could add value to their project. 

Industry partners as collaborators

Any industry partners involved in an application must be members of the MHP Industry Alliance and must be declared within the application form.

Where an application includes industry partners, applicants are required to complete Part 4 – Industry Involvement of the application form. Applicants must confirm whether the collaboration is being submitted under the MRC Industry Collaboration Framework (ICF).

If the application includes industry partners but is not being submitted under the MRC Industry Collaboration Framework, applicants must clearly explain why the Framework does not apply, as set out in Part 4 of the application form.

If you are considering industry involvement and are unsure how this applies to your proposal, please contact the MHP Coordinating Team at mhp@ed.ac.uk with a brief outline of your project and the proposed role of the industry partner prior to submission.

Funding decisions are made at the Collaboration & Innovation Review Committee meeting. After the MHP Leadership Team confirms the awards, the decisions will be communicated to UKRI and the successful applicants.

The Coordinating Team, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh Research Office, will update the MHP Subaward template with the relevant project information and forward it to the participating institutions and project leads. The project is expected to start within 6 months of the decision being made and within 1 month of the subaward being signed.

Awardees are expected to comply with the MHP values and Data Sharing Policy. Where a project generates or uses data that fall within the MHP Data Sharing Policy, the relevant data should be deposited on DATAMIND’s Trusted Research Environment where applicable.

Successful projects will also be subject to MHP monitoring and reporting requirements for the duration of the award.

Download the Collaboration & Innovation Review Process and Scoring Criteria document on this page below for more information