Today our round 7 application period closed and we received 68 applications, by far our biggest yet (last year we received 37). It’s so inspiring to see how much is going on at grassroots level in Bristol. We have applications from right across the city, Southmead to Hartcliffe, Easton to Lawrence Weston, and covering a huge range of communities and issues relating to inequality and injustice.

We’ll be taking the next couple of weeks to check over the applications and make sure they are clear and complete and each has the best chance possible before going on to be read and scored. The decision-makers are people from groups we’ve funded in the past – and this year also applicants themselves.

We’re also busy organising a day with applicants focused on connections and sharing skills and resources. Money is always useful, but it can go much further if we can access what we need for free through connections with each other.

We’ll be letting groups know about the outcome of their applications at the end of October. We have added more time in to the process this year as in previous years it has been a lot of work for both the Redistro collective (we’re all volunteers) and all those involved in scoring applications, leading to a few of us being pretty frazzled at the end of it! So this year we are aiming for a process that is fair, participatory and sustainable.

Help us to support as many of these groups as possible by donating to our Open Collective page. Thank you!