Call for New Ideas centered around criminal justice now CLOSED

The deadline for Commonweal Housing’s 2023 Call for New Ideas programme, focusing on the criminal justice system, has now passed. Applications will now be reviewed by a Selection Panel made up of sector experts, Commonweal staff and Commonweal Trustees, and successful applicants will be announced in November.

This year marked the fourth year the charity has opened it’s flagship Call for New Ideas partnership programme, inviting not-for-profits to come forward with imaginative housing-based ideas for projects addressing social injustice.

Through the programme, Commonweal is allocating funding for not-for-profit organisations to complete a feasibility study to explore housing models seeking to address issues within the criminal justice system.

The feasibility study will determine if there is scope for the proposed model to operate as a property-based pilot project, which Commonweal would look to support by providing bespoke property for successful applicants to run their pilot over several years.

This year, the call was only centered around the criminal justice system – one of Commonweal’s priority focus areas – to help the charity focus attention and resources. However, the call will re-open twice in 2024 to focus on Commonweal’s other priority areas: migration, asylum and human trafficking and injustices facing young people separately.

Amy Doyle, Deputy Chief Executive at Commonweal Housing, said: “We would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who applied and got in touch. Since we established Call for New Ideas in 2020, the programme has helped turn many organisation’s housing initiatives into reality, and we hope this year’s cohort will be no different. We pleased we received a high volume of compelling housing models aiming to address issues within the criminal justice system and look forward to announcing our new partners soon.”

In the meantime, if you have any questions please contact info@commonweal.org.uk.