Mayor of London backs innovation and creativity with latest High Street Fund awards

Small businesses and community groups on London’s high streets are set to receive a share of up to £9 million of funding from the Mayor of London to help revitalise and potentially reinvent the way we use our high streets. In an innovative move the Mayor has allocated a portion of the funding through crowdfunding website Spacehive, where community groups are able to post their ideas and ask for financial support.

It is the first time the Mayor of a major European city has used a civic crowdfunding website to directly pledge money for community projects. 83 groups submitted ideas and the Mayor will be pledging up to £20,000 each to 17 of these projects.

The grants awarded through the Mayor’s High Street Fund will be invested in 42 high streets across London, including 25 larger borough-led projects and 17 community-led projects. The Mayor’s commitment to culture and the creative industries is clearly demonstrated through the award of nearly a third of the funding to projects with a cultural element. Cultural and creative projects feature strongly, with Mayoral funding supporting over 90,000sq feet of new workspace, 10 new festivals and 10 new works of art.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: “The imagination, enterprise and creativity of Londoners has shone through in the array of ideas that were put forward to the High Street Fund. London’s high streets are no longer about retail alone and I am thrilled to be supporting projects that seek to diversify and unlock opportunities in our most prized urban assets.”

The High Street Fund is the latest in a series of funding rounds, which started in 2011 with the Outer London Fund, aimed specifically at helping London’s high streets to adapt and thrive.

For those who missed out, there is still over £285,000 available in the second round of community-led Spacehive projects. To be considered for support, ideas should be posted on the Mayor’s Spacehive page and be actively crowdfunding before the next round of pledges on Monday 29 June.

Click here to read the full press release.