On Tuesday 30 June, Grant Capture joined colleagues from Walmer Group at Future Space Bristol for The Funding Formula: Grants, our first joint workshop and the beginning of what we hope will be a long and productive partnership.
The room was full of founders, scale-ups and innovation-led businesses, all asking sharp questions about how to approach grant funding as the landscape shifts. Innovate UK’s move towards commercially scalable innovation is changing what assessors look for, and much of the session was spent working through what that means in practice for businesses preparing applications in 2026 and beyond.
The central theme: a compelling narrative
Much of the discussion kept returning to one idea. A strong grant application is built on a compelling narrative: a clear and urgent challenge, a credible vision for the future, a team uniquely equipped to deliver it, and evidence that backs up every claim. Get that right, and everything else in an application has something solid to hang on.
That is easier said than done, of course. Many applicants know their technology or research inside out but find it genuinely difficult to step back and present it as an investment case rather than a technical description. The workshop gave participants practical tools and frameworks to start making that shift.
“The real pleasure was to spend time at Future Space for The Funding Formula: Grants: a room full of founders, scale-ups and innovation-led businesses, all asking sharp questions about how to approach grant funding as the landscape shifts. The energy in the room made it.”
— Professor John Terry FMedSci, Co-Founder, Grant Capture
The response from participants
The feedback from those who attended was encouraging. Several participants left with a clearer sense of where their current approach needs to develop, particularly around narrative architecture, project and risk management, and the discipline of writing explicitly for an assessor’s perspective rather than an internal audience.
A number of attendees have already been in touch to continue the conversation, which is exactly the outcome we hoped for. Whether someone is preparing their first application or looking to strengthen a resubmission, the workshop confirmed that there is real appetite for practical, expert-led support in this space.
Thank you
Thank you to Walmer Group for a genuine partnership, to Future Space for hosting us so well, and above all to everyone who came along and threw themselves into the discussion.
If you were there and want to carry on the conversation, or if you missed this session and would like to know about future events, our door is always open.