EdJAM Funding Call – Proposals into creative approaches to teaching and learning about the violent past

EdJAM is a research network funded by the United Kingdom Research Institutes’ (UKRI) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). We are a growing network of researchers, educators and civil society organizations working in the arts, education and heritage. We are committed to creative ways to teach and learn about the violent past in order to contribute to building more just futures. We work together according to a set of values around generosity, dialogue, reflexivity, respect, co-responsibility, creativity and sustainability (read more about our values here).

EdJAM is currently supporting civil society partners in Cambodia, Colombia, Pakistan, Uganda and the UK on projects using creative methodologies drawing on heritage, digital technologies, transitional justice and memory approaches. Please explore their work on the projects pages of our website as these are excellent examples of the types of projects we hope to fund.

EdJAM takes a broad understanding of education and learning, understanding that schools and classrooms are not the only spaces for encountering the past and learning to build more just futures. We are interested in formal, and informal education and also in the interactions between these spaces. We are interested in teachers, textbooks, curricula and education policy and in finding out more about how these can mediate and enable (and challenge and prevent) learning. We are also interested in other mediating and enabling spaces and processes including, but not limited to, heritage sites and organizations, family and community space, media and technology, civil society and activist organizations, social movements, transitional justice and memory processes.

We welcome projects that explore how children and youth set their own agendas for engaging with the past and building more just futures, including through social movements, resistance and creativity. We are interested in the ways that ignorance, denial and complicity can maintain injustice and close opportunities for learning and dialogue. We support hopeful, creative, reparative and dignifying learning practices and approaches and welcome proposals that seek to develop or theorise these. Members of the EdJAM team have written about education as a site of memory and reading this may be helpful to understand more about our shared approach.

We organise our interests into the three EdJAM themes below. Please keep them in mind when applying and think about which theme your project most closely aligns with. We appreciate projects may align with more than one theme, but please chose the one that most closely aligns with the issues explored in or approach of your project.

EdJAM Themes

• Heritage, Education and Everyday Lives
• History Education and Classrooms
• Transitional Justice and Memory

With this call for proposals, we plan to expand our network by funding between 13-19 projects that explore and advance creative approaches to teaching and learning about the violent past. EdJAM will provide a Digital Mentorship programme for all funded research projects, supporting learning and sharing across projects. Covid-19 permitting we will also host a summer school to bring all projects together to share their approaches and results and to help us to synthesise learning together. Collectively, the work funded by EdJAM will have a lot to contribute to discussions about peace education and building more just futures, including by contributing critical knowledge around how to meet Sustainable Development Goal target 4.7 to work towards a culture of peace and non-violence. We will also work together to identify other conversations where we can collectively and individually share our work.

EdJAM is a research network committed to creating, amplifying and synthesising knowledge. It is also a practical network, privileged to support projects working directly to develop creative approaches for teaching and learning about the violent past. We hope to fund projects that span these two areas of commitment. Some projects will be more practice orientated, with EdJAM funding enabling new activities, or supporting existing initiatives to expand or deepen their work. Other projects may be more research oriented. This might include: research to better understand the processes, outcomes and impacts of an existing initiative or set of initiatives; research that tries something new and evaluates its outcomes; or research that seeks to develop new theoretical or conceptual knowledge. Please explore the projects pages of our website where you can see the projects that EdJAM civil society partners in Cambodia, Colombia, Pakistan and Uganda are currently leading. These are excellent examples of the types of projects we hope to fund.

We plan to fund projects between 13-19 that do at least one of the following:

• Develop and use creative approaches, pedagogies and/or practices that open spaces for dialogue and learning about past violence and injustice and their legacies in the present.
• Research the impact of ongoing initiatives to teach and learn about the violent past.
• Develop and share materials (including, but not limited to, exhibitions, curricular resources, digital materials, artwork, theatre) to support dialogue around past violence and injustice and their legacies in the present.
• Develop new theoretical, methodological and/or conceptual understandings around teaching and learning about the violent past.

To support projects that do at least one of the above, we ask that applicants develop transparent and ethical budgets, including consideration for fairly compensating the time of those involved in the project. Section 3.2 outlines in more detail the types of expenditure that EdJAM will fund, which include costs associated with managing, administering, equipping and documenting the proposed project. Section 3.2 also includes information about the kinds of expenditure that are ineligible for EdJAM funding.

Our funding is for projects based in low and middle-income countries on the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee’s (DAC) List of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) Recipients. Section 3.1 on eligibility provides more information about individual and organizational eligibility for funding and about the composition of project teams.

We ask that all proposals aim to share learning from their work, including by producing at least one creative output (for example, but not limited to: a curricular resource, a piece of artwork, music, theatre, an exhibition, a digital technology, an educational guide, etc.) which we will share on our website. EdJAM will also support projects to produce an academic output if they wish to, and this might include a journal article, book chapter, blog post or media article.

The project team will be composed of:

• Project Lead / Principal Investigator (PI) – responsible for the leadership of the project
• Project Team Member(s) / Co-Investigator(s) (Co-Is) (optional) – responsible for supporting the Project Lead / PI in achieving the project goals.

Project Leads / PIs must be based in OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) list countries (a list of DAC countries can be found at: https://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-standards/daclist.htm). Project Team Members / Co-Is can be based in DAC list or non-DAC countries, but, if based in non-DAC list countries, should not make up the majority of the project team.

EdJAM’s funders require some element of United Kingdom involvement in all funded projects. In the case of these small grants, this requirement can be satisfied by participating in the EdJAM Digital Mentorship programme and seeking support from the EdJAM team when necessary.  

For funding purposes, the requirement for research to be based in an OECD DAC recipient country is judged by the organization at which they Project Lead / PI is based. There are instances where an organization, such as an NGO, might be based in one country, but operate in another. In this instance, the application needs to demonstrate: 

• where the majority of work is happening, including the work of the Project Lead / PI; 
• where the Project Lead / PI’s employment contract is held; 
• whether the organization is large, with considerable resources, or smaller, with limited abilities to operate beyond their normal parameters in the DAC list country where the project will operate. 

The assessment panel will consider the composition of the project team, including previous skills and experience; capabilities to undertake the work proposed; and equality, diversity and inclusion. Applications including/led by early career researchers (ECR) are strongly encouraged as are applications led by individuals from groups that are under-represented in receiving research funding and by individuals who have not received research funding before. We welcome applications led by researchers, civil society organizations (large and small), educators, heritage sector professionals, activists and artists and encourage project teams that combine these roles and experiences. 

In the case where a project is led by a non-academic organization (e.g. not a University) it will be important to demonstrate the organization’s capacity to lead and deliver research projects, bearing in mind the broad definition of research used by this call. 

Awards can be for up to 9 months in duration. They can start from 1st February 2022 and must be completed by the end of October 2022. A grant may be used for any research and development related activity around creative practices for teaching and learning about the violent past. Findings from funded activities should be disseminated in at least one output (see Section 1 for more information) to help build research knowledge and drive forward change, including education policy making, formal education curricula, heritage and informal and nonformal education.

Activities that are NOT eligible for funding include:

• Activities that do not contain an element of new research or the development of new methodologies / pedagogies.
• Fees for individuals to undertake university undergraduate or postgraduate courses.
• Any application where equipment forms over 25% of the total budget.
• Projects without a host organization – it is not possible for us to transfer funds directly to an individual. The project budget must be managed by a host organization at which the Project Lead / PI is based.

The host organization is the organization at which the Project Lead / PI is based. Each project must have a host organization.

The host organization must be based in a DAC list country. The application must be made through a host organization such as an NGO, University, research institute, community group, social enterprise, arts or cultural organization, where the appropriate authority (e.g. Director, Chief Executive, Head of School, Programme Manager, etc.) has agreed for the application to take place.

The host organization will need to agree to the criteria below if their application is successful. If you are interested in applying for funding but do not belong to an organization that is able to meet all of these criteria, please contact the EdJAM team as soon as possible using the edjam-network@bristol.ac.uk email address. We may be able to provide support to enable your organization to meet the criteria or consider other options.

Ability to deliver

The organization applying for an award should be able to:

• demonstrate in-house capacity in terms of staff and infrastructure to support and lead excellent research programmes.
• provide evidence of a commitment to maximising the wider impact and value of its research to the benefit of local communities, economies and society.
• demonstrate commitment to the principle of Open Access publication (recognising organizations may not necessarily be signed up to equivalent UK recognised standards).
• have sufficient capacity to deliver research and/or other outputs that are appropriate to the wider aims of the EdJAM Network Plus award and that can be meaningfully recorded and reported as such.
• demonstrate an ability and commitment to provide appropriate leadership and support to those staff involved with funded research activity.

Governance and Control

The organization should be able to:

• demonstrate good governance and control functions including policies and approaches to control risk and mitigate fraud and corruption.
• have satisfactory processes for preventing, detecting, reporting and responding to allegations of slavery, fraud, bribery and corruption.
• have satisfactory processes in place that meet Research Integrity and Ethics requirements, including processes for dealing with allegations of misconduct.
• be subject to appropriate levels of independent audit.
• demonstrate an ability to support the effective collection, management, analysis and dissemination of data.
• have satisfactory processes to ensure that effective safeguarding policies and practices are approved, implemented and monitored.

Financial Stability

The organization should be able to:

• demonstrate that they are financially stable and have robust assurance around managing and accounting for grant funding.
• have a bank account that is in its legal name and that can be reconciled to the appropriate finance management system.
• have a basic finance management system that can be used to reconcile the bank account, to record all cash and payments ensuring that all transactions can be individually identified and provides suitable storage for supporting documentation.
• have satisfactory procedures reimbursement of advances and/or expenses for approved activities.

Sub-contract Management

Where the project involves sub-contracting to third parties, the organization should be able to:

• ensure there is a policy in place to sufficiently manage sub-contractors, ensure safeguarding, and address any associated financial or compliance risks.

Due Diligence

Where a project is chosen for funding, you will be required to evidence the above through the provision of appropriate policies, procedures and audited financial statements as part of the University of Bristol’s due diligence process. At application stage, we ask that you read the ‘Due Diligence Check List and Letter’ You are then required to sign the letter to show you are aware of these requirements and will provide evidence of the above if the project is successful. Again, if you need further guidance on what this entails or are not clear as to whether or not you are able to produce such evidence, please contact us now and we may be able to offer assistance. Please use the edjam-network@bristol.ac.uk email address for such queries.

An eligible budget will meet the following criteria:

• At least 70% of the full economic cost of the project must be allocated to one or more DAC list countries involved to meet UK Overseas Development Aid (ODA) requirements for direct benefit.
• No more than 30% of costs will be allocated to an international, non-DAC, Co-Investigator’s institution.
• Your budget must be in Great British Pounds (GBP). When converting currency, please use www.xe.com and include evidence for the exchange rate used
• Payments will be made in GBP and if applicants anticipate bank charges for receiving the funds in GBP then they can include the bank charges in their budget. (If funds can not be received in GBP, please contact us on edjam-network@bristol.ac.uk to discuss)
• Budgets will not exceed £25,000 (international team members should be fully costed and paid at 100% – all UK costs must be in accordance with the UKRI full economic cost (fEC) model – see glossary).
• No more than 25% of the budget will be used to purchase equipment.
• Organizations in DAC listed countries can request up to 20% of overheads on all costs – these must be included as part of the total requested budget.
• All of the activities will take place within the project dates, for example train travel cannot take place after the project finishes even if the ticket is purchased before the end date.
• All expenses should be good value for money for example standard class public transport and economy air travel.
• All costs of outputs, for example translation costs should be included.
• Costs for Open Access (OA) publishing (see glossary for further details) led by DAC list countries should be included – this costs approximately £2,800 for inclusion in UK/USA publications.
• All expenditure mentioned throughout the application will be accounted for and detailed in the budget justification section of the application form – if any of the expenditure is funded by another means this should also be briefly outlined in this section
• Capital or infrastructure expenditure (e.g. basic office/laboratory/accommodation furniture or equipment, building/site construction, maintenance or refurbishment work, etc.) is not an eligible cost under this call although additional costs incurred by existing facilities or infrastructures relating to their use as a part of the research or in the archiving of project specific research data/outputs may be considered – this includes justifiable wifi and data bundle costs.

Applications to this call for proposals can be submitted in English or in Spanish. All proposals received in one of these languages by the deadline of Wednesday 20th October 2021 at 16:00 BST will first be checked for eligibility. This check will include:

• Checking that the proposal is complete, including all required annexes.
• Checking that the proposed work will take place in one (or more) locations on the OECD DAC recipient list.
• Checking that the proposed activities, team make-up, budget and other criteria are eligible.
• Project leads will be contacted if there are any eligibility issues at this first check but it may not be possible for projects that do not pass these checks to be considered for funding.

All projects that pass this first eligibility check will then be reviewed by three people from the EdJAM team, including EdJAM investigators and Advisory Board members. Reviewers will declare a conflict of interest if they have a close personal or professional relationship with any of the named applicants on a project proposal and therefore, they will not be involved in reviewing that project. We have also asked that applicants identify any potential conflicts of interest with members of the EdJAM team on the application form. For a full list of EdJAM network team and Advisory Board members go to our team page.

Projects will be evaluated by reviewers against the criteria listed below:

Fit to EdJAM call:

• Does the project align with EdJAM’s aims and interests? Does the project align with EdJAM values and themes?

Creativity and originality:

• Will the project develop new knowledge and/or practices around creative approaches for teaching and learning about the violent past? Does the project take reasonable risks and/or use creative and original approaches?

Project team:

• Does the proposed team have the experience and skills required to undertake the project? Will the members of the team benefit from being involved in EdJAM, including via the Digital Mentorship programme?

Approach and ethics:

• Is the proposed approach appropriate for exploring the issues of interest? Have relevant ethical and safeguarding issues been considered?

Management and feasibility:

• Is the project timeline reasonable?
• Are the ambitions of the project achievable within the timeframe and budget planned for?
• Have potential risks been thought through?
• Does the project have a clear plan for achieving its aims?

Impact and Outcomes:

• Does the project produce at least one creative output that can be shared on the EdJAM website
• Will the project have valuable outcomes for the people it engages with linked to EdJAM themes and goals?

Ethical budgeting:

• Are the project costs appropriate for the work to be undertaken?
• Do costs appropriately reflect the contributions and time of team members and participants?

Review scores will then be consolidated and evaluated in a panel meeting. Final decisions will be based on reviewer scores with an attention to geographical and thematic spread of funded projects and equality and diversity in the profiles of the project lead.

To apply for an EdJAM grant, please download and complete the forms listed below and submit them by Wednesday 20th October at 16:00 BST. All documents should be sent together in one email to edjam-network@bristol.ac.uk email.

EdJAM grants up to £25,000 application form

EdJAM grants up to £25,000 project budget form – Updated 13/10/2021

Signed Due Diligence Letter

Due Diligence Checklist

(Annex 1) Example Due Diligence Questionnaire below:

• University of Bristol Due Diligence Questionnaire – For information only

(Click on the links above to download all of the documents)

Please check the application tick list at the end of the application form to ensure your application is complete.

The application form asks for personal information including gender, career stage, whether you are a member of racialised and/or minoritized group in your context, disability, caring responsibilities, and other characteristics that you feel might be relevant to your application. This is because EdJAM is committed to inclusivity in research funding and hopes to fund projects led by people from different backgrounds and life experiences. This information will be held confidentially by the EdJAM team and reviewers. It will help us to monitor the number of applications received and our funding decisions, but any exercises of this kind will be done in aggregate and data will not be linked to individuals. You can leave these questions blank if you prefer not to provide this information.

EdJAM will run application support sessions led by Co-Investigators and the Bristol-based team to answer any questions that you may have about developing a project and completing an application. Full details will be available on the upcoming events page of our website and emailed to the EdJAM mailing list

(please subscribe to our mailing list if you have not already).

We will notify all Team Leads of the outcome of applications by 1 December 2021. Successful applicants will then complete due diligence procedures as outlined in Section 3. Due diligence information will be checked by the University of Bristol and any queries will be explored with the Project Lead / host organization.

Once due diligence has been signed off, a contract will be agreed between the University of Bristol and the lead organization. The University of Bristol will provide a first draft of this contract (for review and agreement between both parties. The contract will include a payment schedule to agree how the budget for the project will be transferred from the University of Bristol to the host organization. This will also include information about record keeping and reporting around project expenditure and the process through which organizations can invoice for project payment.

All projects will need to obtain ethical approval. Where host organizations have ethical review boards, this approval can be obtained via these channels. If host organizations do not have ethical review boards, EdJAM will facilitate ethical review either via the University of Bristol or via the organizations of an EdJAM Co-Investigator.

We will work with all funded projects to create a project page on the EdJAM website. EdJAM will provide a digital mentorship programme for all funded research projects, supporting learning and sharing across projects. We hope all project leads will participate actively in the Digital Mentorship Programme scheme and we will design the scheme taking account of the development needs identified by Project Leads. We will endeavour to include other team members in the Digital Mentorship programme where possible. Covid-19 permitting we will also host a summer school to bring all projects together to share their approaches and results and to help us to synthesise learning together.

EdJAM’s Learning, Partnership and Collaborative Evaluation team will also be in touch with all project teams in order to help synthesise learning and contributions across the network. They will also evaluate EdJAM’s work as a whole, including its success in commissioning and supporting projects according to its values.

As part of your application, you will need to submit completed letters of support from your host organisation and your project partner(s).

Each letter of support should include the following information:

• Confirmation that the host organisation/project partner is happy to be involved in the research project being proposed by you
• Confirmation that the host organisation/project partner understands and agrees to their role on the project
• Details of how being involved in the project will benefit the host organisation/project partner and the applicant/research team
• Details of strengths/value added they would bring to the proposal (including any contributions in kind, e.g. research time, specialist resource)

The letter will need to be signed by someone with the authority to represent the host organisation/project partner. A letter on headed paper, or an email from a business email account, including the signatory’s full name and position within their organisation would be acceptable.

All countries that appear on the most current OECD DAC list – DAC List of ODA Recipients for reporting 2021 flows June 2021.xlsx (oecd.org) (https://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-standards/DAC-List-ODA-Recipients-for-reporting-2021-flows.pdf) can apply. This includes countries in all columns:

• Least Developed Countries (LDC)
• Low-Income Countries (LIC) which are not LDCs
• Lower Middle-Income Countries (LMIC) and Territories which are not LDCs
• Upper Middle-Income Countries (UMIC) and Territories which are not LDCs

Applications from India are eligible. However, all grants will be paid in GBP. This means that any organisation wishing to apply must hold or be in the process of applying for a Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) license and State Bank of India (SBI) bank account.  We are aware that this can be a long and complicated process to obtain. We are therefore happy to accept applications from organisations that are applying for these on the condition that proof that they have been obtained is submitted to us by no later than 08.11.21. If this documentation is not received by this date, the application will not be able to proceed further.

Due diligence is the investigation the University of Bristol is expected to take before entering into an agreement or contract with another party i.e. the organisations awarded grants under the EdJAM commissioned research call.

As part of your application, you will need to submit a completed signed copy of the ‘Due Diligence Letter’ confirming that you are able to produce all the due diligence documentation asked for in the ‘University of Bristol Due Diligence Questionnaire’ within five days should you be awarded a grant. At the application stage, you also need to fill in the short ‘Due Diligence Checklist’. If there are any questions you can not answer on this checklist, please email us at edjam-network@bristol.ac.uk to discuss this further.

If you look through the ‘University of Bristol Due Diligence Questionnaire’ and have any queries about the questions being asked or are unable to produce the documentation being asked for please email us at edjam-network@bristol.ac.uk to discuss this further. Due diligence answers are individual to each organisation and we will need to advise on a case by case basis.

It is possible to support due diligence applications for organisations that are not able to produce all of the documents on the questionnaire – please get in touch with us early to discuss if this is the case for your host organisation.

The Due Diligence Letter and Due Diligence Checklist is available to download in section 6 (above)

Any contributions in kind must be shown in the budget template but with a £0.00 cost. They must be details in the Budget Justification section giving the actual monetary value in GBP especially staff members. The host/partner organisation who is giving a contribution in kind must detail the contribution in kind in their letter of support (see the previous Due Diligence FAQ) to show that they are fully signed up to it.

One organisation can put in more than one application. However, a Principle Investigator/Team leader can not put in more than one application. This means that if an organisation puts in multiple applications the team make up must be different in each application.

We do not expect academic papers resulting from EdJAM funding to be completed or published within the nine-month project timeframe. We ask for one creative output to be ready to share on our website (and more widely according to project goals) by the end of the nine-month project.

Projects that do wish to develop academic publications (journal articles, book chapters, blog posts) will receive support to do so as part of the digital mentorship programme. We understand that this process will take longer than nine months due to the nature of academic research and publishing practices. Ideally, the paper should be published before the end of the overall EdJAM project (31 March 2024 but may be extended). If you are unable to reach this deadline you should contact the team at edjam-network@bristol.ac.uk to discuss this further.

Yes. State institutions will go through the same due diligence procedures (see section 3.3) as all other host organisations. We currently work with the Uganda National Museum, which is a state institution.

There is no requirement for any content created as part of your proposal to be in English or to be translated into English. EdJAM has a bilingual website (English and Spanish) and we also have some content in other languages. For example, The Children’s Series booklet project will have resources available in English, Urdu, Sindhi and Balochi.

If you are not able to budget for translation or this is not part of your proposal, we may be able to help with translation into English. Please email us at edjam-network@bristol.ac.uk to discuss this further.