Currently 6 active open calls open to applicants in the UK, across AI, arts, film, journalism, research, tech and cross-disciplinary practice. Hand-curated and updated weekly. Almost every entry is funded; a few notable unpaid open calls and festival submissions are included as clearly flagged exceptions. Browse the list below, or use the interactive desk for filtering and shortlisting.
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GMAC Film's Little Pictures scheme funds Scotland-based filmmakers making their first funded short film, with up to GBP 6,000 production funding per film plus a year of training, workshops, industry mentorship and free access to equipment and resources. Fiction, documentary, animation and experimental work are all eligible, and the scheme has produced over 50 films across Scotland in its six years, prioritizing underrepresented voices in the screen sector. ELIGIBILITY: 18+, based anywhere in Scotland, not in full-time education, and not previously commissioned to make a film (Opening Shot alumni excepted); no prior filmmaking experience required, and separate tracks exist for filmmakers and producers. Access support provisions are available for applicants facing additional barriers. Deadline: 9 September 2026, 10am.
Bridging the Gap is the Scottish Documentary Institute's flagship short documentary talent scheme for new and emerging filmmakers based in Scotland and Northern Ireland. From an initial shortlist of 12 projects, up to 4 films receive full commissions with cash budgets (GBP 8,500 per film in the previous round) plus production and distribution support, with finished films distributed to cinemas and international festivals; BtG shorts have a long track record of festival play and awards. The programme combines professional development, production funding and distribution: shortlisted filmmakers take part in intensive workshops and pitch to a panel of experts. The scheme looks for surprising, challenging and moving submissions that embrace the possibilities of the documentary genre and subvert expectations in form and content. Access support is available for disabled applicants, and information is available in alternative formats on request. Deadline: 9 September 2026, midnight.
Waag Futurelab invites artists, theatre makers, choreographers, dancers, game designers and other creative practitioners to engage directly with seven experimental generative AI Enablers being co-created with technologists and dance, theatre and gaming professionals. The call is an invitation into the development process: selected artists get access to the technologies, datasets, interfaces and assumptions that shape these systems while they are still being built. Rather than testing whether the systems work, artists are asked to interrogate why they work the way they do, who they are designed for, what forms of creativity they enable or constrain, and what assumptions about culture, intelligence, authorship, labour, bodies, audiences and society are embedded in them. Waag is looking for individuals and collectives willing to move beyond adoption into investigation, and welcomes proposals that are speculative, critical, poetic, provocative, humorous, performative, constructive or disruptive, including work that challenges, misuses, reimagines, hacks, subverts or plays with the tools, exposes hidden biases, questions environmental costs, or imagines alternative technological futures. THE SEVEN AI ENABLERS, each requiring an on-site visit to its technology partner: the Generic Procedural Content Generation Enabler (text-to-3D assets and avatars, CERTH, Greece); the Data-Driven Cultural Content Adaptation Enabler (audience-aware creative content ideation with ranked candidate ideas, CERTH, Greece); the Cross-Domain Audience Engagement Analytics Enabler (turning heterogeneous cultural participation data into interpretable engagement signals, The Audience Agency, Warrington, UK); the Dance Style Analysis and Generation Enabler (dance video into virtual 3D choreography, dissected into body, effort, shape and space components, Centre of Excellence for Research & Innovation, Cyprus); the Immersive Design Integration Enabler for Dance & Theatre (NLP-driven XR environments with speech-to-3D scene editing, Cyprus); the Music-to-Movement Translation Enabler (audio into a time-aligned feature set spanning genre classification, emotional valence-arousal analysis, rhythm extraction and latent-space projection, feeding motion generation, spatial audio and visual choreography, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece); and the Adaptive Narrative Enabler for Games & Theatre (an evolutionary AI trained on creator-written story elements that generates infinite story variations, explicitly rejecting LLMs because of their dependence on copyrighted or public-domain corpora that encode 19th and early 20th century sexism, racism and imperialism, CAUSA Creation, Austria). ELIGIBILITY: artists, designers, creative technologists, theatre makers, dancers, choreographers and game designers, as individuals or collectives; applicants must hold a European VAT number. An info session with live demonstrations of the AI Enablers runs 31 July 2026, 10:00 to 11:30 CEST (meeting ID 995 7016 2341). Applications go through Homerun using the official Application Template, uploaded as a PDF; read the Guide for Applicants, which contains the full Enabler descriptions, before applying. Questions: zoenie at waag dot org. The AI Enablers and this call are part of the Horizon Europe project HAMLET, which aims to make generative AI accessible to cultural organisations of all sizes. Closes 30 September 2026, 23:59 CEST. Free to apply.
The 17th Open City Documentary Festival takes place at venues across London in April 2027, presenting international contemporary and retrospective non-fiction film, audio and cross-media work alongside filmmaker Q&As, panels, talks and workshops. The festival nurtures experimentation within the expanded field of non-fiction cinema, from artists' moving image to documentary, the essay film, audio and cross-media works; recent artists screened include Sky Hopinka, Onyeka Igwe, Luke Fowler, Ana Vaz, Jessica Sarah Rinland and Morgan Quaintance. ELIGIBILITY: non-fiction film and video, cross-platform projects and audio works completed after 1 January 2026; no strict premiere requirement, but works not yet publicly screened in London are prioritized. All selected filmmakers receive screening fees: GBP 275 for works over 60 minutes, GBP 140 for works over 40 minutes, GBP 70 for works under 40 minutes, GBP 100 for cross-platform projects (all incl. VAT). Submissions via FilmFreeway with tiered entry fees (lower before the early deadline). EARLY DEADLINE: 25 September 2026. FINAL DEADLINE: 27 November 2026; all entrants notified by 22 February 2027.
The British Council's standing Travel Grant Fund helps early to mid-career UK filmmakers and XR creatives represent their work abroad, build networks, reach new audiences and raise the international profile of new and emerging UK film and immersive talent. Supported by BFI National Lottery funding in partnership with BFI NETWORK and the BFI International Fund. WHAT IT FUNDS: travel to attend international film festivals, showcases, training and development labs, and co-production forums, across five strands: short film festival grants, feature film festival grants, interactive/XR grants (including VR, immersive storytelling experiences and installations), lab grants and co-production forum grants. AMOUNTS: short and feature festival grants GBP 150 to 1,500 (typically up to GBP 750); XR travel-only grants GBP 150 to 1,500; large XR grants GBP 1,500 to 5,000; lab grants up to GBP 6,000; co-production forum grants up to GBP 2,000. WHO CAN APPLY: UK residents or citizens aged 18+; applicants can be directors, producers or writers attached to the selected project. KEY CONDITIONS: the festival, lab or forum must appear on the British Council's Key Lists of eligible events, and the project must be registered on the British Council's UK Project Database. DEADLINE: rolling, no fixed deadlines; submit at least two weeks before the event starts (retrospective applications for past events are not accepted). Free to apply.
The Audience Projects Fund distributes GBP 19.7 million of National Lottery money over three years to widen UK audiences for film and immersive work, covering exhibition, distribution, festivals, touring programmes and sector-support initiatives. It reopened in November 2025 and runs continuously with no closing date, which makes it one of the more accessible large BFI pots for organisations working on the audience-facing rather than production side. AWARDS are tiered: small pilot projects receive GBP 10,000 to GBP 20,000, while full projects can receive GBP 20,000 to GBP 500,000 per year, with immersive projects permitted to include up to GBP 150,000 of production cost inside that envelope. ELIGIBILITY is strictly institutional. Applicants must be legally constituted organisations centrally managed in the UK and not more than 50% foreign-owned. Eligible types include limited companies (not classed as 'large' under the Companies Act 2006), community interest companies, LLPs, UK local or statutory authorities, and registered UK charities or trusts. Individual practitioners cannot apply. Applicants must evidence experience in marketing, festivals, distribution, immersive installations, cultural programming, touring or sector support. TIMING: there are no deadlines but lead times are enforced. Single-film distribution projects must apply at least 10 weeks before release; all other projects at least 16 weeks before the project starts.