Launching UK Spark Grants
Small, fast cheques for new initiatives that spark local activation energy in the UK.
How do you get brilliant people so excited by the future, they go and build it themselves?
It’s the spring of 1975. A man called Lee stands at the front of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center’s auditorium and welcomes the crowd to ‘the Homebrew Computer Club which does not exist’. Everyone applauds.
In the audience is Allen Baum. A few months earlier he’d seen a poster for the club’s first gathering on the wall of the People’s Computer Company, the first public access computer centre in the world. The poster read ‘Hey hackers, if you’re interested in homebrew computing, come over to this address at this time and this date’. Its creators were enamoured with a January 1975 Popular Electronics cover featuring the MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer. Now, starting in their garage, they wanted to gather those who shared their belief that the personal computer revolution was only just beginning.
Invited to join by Allen, and now standing next to him in the auditorium, Steve Wozniak is sharing the progress he’s made on a personal computer prototype to an enthusiastic crowd - a prototype later known as Apple-1. Many months and iterations later Wozniak would be joined by his friend Steve Jobs, and together they’d land their first sale in that same auditorium. 50 units, from a store inspired by BYTE magazine, 20 minutes down the road in Mountain View. It was Apple Computer Inc’s first.
The Homebrew Computer Club was deeply collaborative, and purposefully under-the-radar. No banks sponsored it, no VCs were present, it disbanded just over a year after founding. However, its members would go on to start 21 companies, including Apple, and its legacy would inspire generations of hackerspaces and open-source software communities. A fascination shared by a small group of people created local activation energy - posters, clubs, magazines, advocates - a tangled, dense web of cross-polination. Wozniak would go on to affirm that ‘without computer clubs there would probably be no Apple computers’. This fascination alone didn’t change the world, the way it brought people together did.
Today I’m launching Spark Grants - small, fast cheques to fund new initiatives that create local activation energy across the UK.
Momentum is building for a 21st century renaissance. Discourse details the levers the UK should pull to keep up and distribute the benefits; capital, talent, tax, TTO reform, AI policy, and more. Underpinning all of these levers is culture, and energy.
My goal is to create more ambitious local ecosystems that accelerate the UK towards the future. This kind of community building is a public service that receives little early support. Our belief is that these small, fast grants for community builders across the UK could have an outsized impact.
Spark Grants is anchored by the UK Dynamism Fund, and run independently by me (Leone) adjacent to my work building the ARIA-funded Encode: AI for Science Fellowship at Pillar VC. Applications are rolling, you will hear from us within the week, grantees will be announced publicly. Initiatives must be based in the UK but can be run by anyone. Grant sizes will range from £300-£1000, follow-on support will be considered on an ad-hoc basis.
We’re looking to seed new initiatives1 where there is:
An aligned mission - you care about making the UK a more dynamic place.
Clarity about ‘who’ you’re building for, and ‘why’ it’s necessary. Then…
Creativity about ‘how’ you bring this group together.
Ambition to get the room, or the audience, thinking bigger, bolder and more creatively.
Strong personal motivation from the individual, or a team, at the helm - ideally, running this initiative would be additive to your career.
Clear additionality - we want to fund things where a microgrant is a meaningful unlock. If further funding is required, the team is already working to obtain this.
A bias for action, to ‘show, not tell’ - e.g. don’t just talk about the outcomes you wish to see, platform those who are achieving it already.
The Homebrew Computer Club had no sponsor, no budget, and no masterplan beyond meeting again next month. What it had was a room, the right people finding their way into it, and a shared excitement about the future.
Communities are waiting to be created across the UK. Apply now, and build.
Initiatives can be anything from substacks, magazines, and interviews to make-a-thons, dinners and clubs. We’re purposefully keeping the definition broad. We want to fund things too new or too niche to successfully attract traditional sponsorship, or groups where sponsor money could negatively affect their authenticity. Examples of potential grantees I’m speaking to include; a neuro x art hackathon, a discussion forum for early career researchers focused on UK growth, a zine documenting those making computers more personal again. One-off initiatives are welcomed in equal measure to a first event that becomes a series. Funding can’t be re-granted, so money can’t go towards (e.g.) prizes. We won’t fund political activities, and funding will go to individuals or societies, not established organisations. Full FAQs here.
This is very exciting indeed!!!