City Centre Vibrancy Fund
About the fund
In recognition of the challenges facing city centre businesses, we have opened applications for the City Centre Vibrancy Fund. The City Centre Vibrancy Fund has been enabled through Government funding from Derby’s Shared Prosperity Fund allocation. This has a key priority around building pride in place and engagement in local culture and community. Challenges such as the impact of covid and decline in retail have had an impact on Derby City Centre and the businesses located there. We aim to address some of these issues through this funding.
A positive experience when visiting a city is essential to improve reputation, increase footfall and encourage repeat visits. We are looking to award grants to enable creative and cultural projects that will contribute to an overall increase and improvement in the vibrancy of Derby. Funded projects will create eye-catching interventions and installations within the public realm, which surprise and engage, connecting people and place, whilst changing the look and feel of the city centre.
Ensuring diversity is visible and celebrated builds pride in a city and ensures people feel included and welcomed. We are therefore keen to receive applications that will help the city centre to reflect the cultural identity of our communities.
The type of projects we anticipate supporting include:
- Creative interventions by local artists into the fabric of the city in the form of decorated hoardings, painted streets, window treatments on vacant property, wall murals and installations.
- Street canopy projects to enliven streets where the infrastructure exists. A technical specification for Irongate street canopy design is available.