Commission Overview

At our 13th July Imagination Tour event, participants spent time imagining different futures, asking bold questions, sharing experiences and exploring what might become possible when creativity is placed alongside community organising, collective action and local leadership. Whilst events like this can be powerful catalysts, we are interested in what happens next. 

• How do ideas move beyond conversations?

• How do moments of inspiration become practical experiments?

• How do artists and communities begin to test alternative ways of working, organising and creating change? 

To support this next stage, we are offering five £1,000 seed commissions that will enable individuals, groups and organisations to develop and test ideas emerging from the themes and conversations explored through the event.

These commissions are intentionally small. They are intended to create space for experimentation and learning. We are interested in supporting people to trial an experiment in Imagination Practice. Imagination isn’t just about dreaming of different futures but can also about creating the conditions to explore them. Through these commissions we want to support practical acts of imagination that help people rehearse, test and experience alternatives in the present, here in County Durham.

Themes

The commissions are connected to the wider ambitions of Outside the Lines and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s work around imagination infrastructure, as well as our wider partners. We are particularly interested in proposals that respond to one of two broad themes, whilst remaining open to ideas that sit beyond them. We are particularly keen to hear about work that will take place in rural areas as well as areas in East Durham, though we will take a County-Wide approach in our commissioning. 

The first theme is Community Wealth Building and Creativity: 

Across County Durham and the wider North East there is growing interest in how communities can retain more wealth, resources, knowledge and opportunity locally. Creativity has an important role to play within this conversation, not simply as a cultural offer but as a way of helping communities imagine and develop new models for the future. We are interested in projects that explore how creative imagination practice might contribute to community wealth building, whether through collective ownership, local enterprise, alternative economies, skills sharing, mutual support, creative production or new ways of thinking about value. They might create space for exploration, discussion, testing or new ways of imagining what a fairer and future could look like.

The second theme is Social Change and Community:

Many of the challenges facing communities today cannot be addressed by individuals acting alone. They require collective responses, stronger relationships and opportunities for people to imagine and create alternatives together. We are interested in projects that explore how imagination practice can strengthen communities, support participation, build confidence, deepen connections and create opportunities for people to shape the places where they live. This might involve bringing people together around a shared question, creating new spaces for conversation, developing community-led ideas or testing approaches that help people feel more connected to the future of their place.

Other Themes:

Alongside these two themes, we also recognise that some of the most exciting ideas emerge unexpectedly. For this reason, we welcome proposals that do not sit neatly within either category but clearly demonstrate how imagination can be used as a tool for social change, possibility, participation or collective action.

Who Can Apply

The commissions are open to artists, creative practitioners, community organisers, activists, local groups, residents, collectives and organisations based in or working alongside communities in County Durham only. The strongest commissions will have a clearly identified community with whom they might work, whether a community of place, of interest, or of identity. 

We are particularly interested in supporting people who attended Outside the Lines and who want to develop an idea that emerged from the conversations, questions and provocations explored throughout the day. We are also equally interested in collaborative proposals that bring together different perspectives, sectors and experiences.

Previous experience of managing funding is not essential. We are more interested in the strength of the idea, the potential for learning and the commitment to exploring new possibilities.

Who Could a Commission Support?

The commissions are intentionally flexible. We recognise that imagination can take many forms and that different ideas require different approaches.

A commission might support a series of conversations exploring a local issue, a community meal designed to bring people together around a shared question, a publication that captures and shares alternative visions of the future, a temporary creative intervention, a learning journey, a workshop programme, a storytelling project, a creative research process or the development of a new tool or methodology.

We are interested in ideas that test, explore and generate learning. Successful projects should be able to demonstrate how they are creating opportunities for people to imagine, participate, reflect or connect in new ways.

What We Hope to Learn

These commissions form part of a wider experiment in imagination infrastructure. As a result, we are interested not only in what projects do, but also in what they discover.

We want to better understand what helps imagination become embedded within communities, organisations and everyday practice. We want to learn about the barriers people encounter, the opportunities they identify and the conditions that allow new ideas to emerge and grow. It might take the form of a conversation with us, presentation, short written reflection, creative output or other suitable format. Please factor this in as you prepare a budget.

Successful commissions will therefore be expected to document and share their learning in a way that feels appropriate to their project, alongside mandatory data requirements that we will provide.  Please factor in around 2 hours of your budgeted time to complete the data monitoring portion of this activity.

Each successful project will receive a commission of £1,000 alongside light-touch support from No More Nowt and project partners. We will support commissioned projects to connect with one another, share experiences and contribute to a collective conversation about imagination, creativity and social change. There is a further access budget available. In your application, please indicate what this might be used for, without going into any detail you aren’t comfortable sharing.

The intention is to create a small cohort of people testing different approaches and generating learning together, so please factor in a further hour of your time to meet with the wider cohort.

Timeline

The commissions will be launched during Outside the Lines on Monday 13th July 2026.

Applications will open immediately following the event and remain open until Mon 3rd August 2026 at 12pm. Successful projects will be selected during August 2026, with activity taking place between September and December 2026. 

In January 2027, commissioned projects will be invited to come together to share learning, reflect on their experiences and consider what might happen next.

How to Apply

The application process has been designed to be simple and proportionate to the scale of the commission.

Applicants are asked to tell us about your idea, how it explores imagination practice, who it is for, any partners involved and how you would use the funding. Use as much or as little space as you need.

Applications can be submitted in writing, audio or video format and sent to hello@nomorenowt.org. We will confirm receipt of each application. If we miss an email, feel free to prompt us! 

If you have any questions, reach out to aaron@nomorenowt.org

Generative AI

At No More Nowt, we are dedicated to the creation of art, and community arts-based practice that stems from human connections that we have nurtured over the past ten years. We believe in human creativity and collaboration, and this is at the heart of our decision making when commissioning artists and organisations. We are a programme that is steeped in working and connecting with people on the ground across County Durham

All applications we receive are read by our small but dedicated team and decided internally alongside our community panel. We rely on the strength of humans, not algorithms. In making your application, please use your own words to reflect ideas, thoughts and feelings about the project. We understand that AI can be used as a tool to remove barriers and help with accessibility of a process. Applications that rely heavily on generative ai will not offer the best picture of you as an artist or organisation, which is core to our practice.