AHRC Impact Acceleration Account

Fostering innovative collaborations to deliver meaningful, sustainable solutions to global challenges

The University of Plymouth has been awarded £450,000 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to run an Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) from April 2022 to March 2025, now extended for a fourth year until March 2026 to a total value of just over £600,000.

This strategic award provides funding to amplify the non-academic impact of arts and humanities research, offering two core funding schemes: the Impact Initiation Fund and the Impact Project and Fellowship Fund. Both schemes aim to establish, develop and accelerate impact from existing, high-quality, published research.

The AHRC IAA accelerates the impact of arts and humanities research by fostering innovative collaborations to address key national and global challenges. It leverages an extensive partner network to overcome key barriers to impact, enabling researchers to respond quickly and effectively to emerging opportunities. Among other pathways to impact, the initiative emphasises unlocking commercial, enterprise, and intellectual property potential while promoting a sustainable and open research culture, as well as enhancing opportunities for policy engagement from arts and humanities research.

University of Plymouth staff can read more about the IAA funding schemes and apply for funding through SharePoint.

Impact in the arts and humanities

Impact is integral to the UK research landscape, and IAAs – as devolved forms of funding – are designed to enable institutions to create opportunities for impact in ways that enhance their approach and areas of expertise. Centrally within the AHRC – and UKRI more widely – understanding of impact in the arts and humanities is a commitment to the intrinsic principles of creativity, imagination, openness, and dialogue that embody these disciplines.

The UKRI defines impact as "the demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to society and the economy", and the AHRC are open to all of the diverse and creative ways in which arts and humanities research positively contributes to humanity and the world in which we live, with a fundamental commitment to placing arts and humanities research at the heart of society’s biggest challenges.

"All human history is in our scope, but so are the challenges of the present and the possibilities for the future… Our ambition is to sustain a rich, diverse and creative research ecosystem, which will engage with other constituents of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and stakeholders across the UK and the world. AHRC is committed to UKRI’s holistic vision of science, in which arts and humanities research is enriched and emboldened by engagement with technology, medicine and our environment, and informs and enriches those disciplines in turn. We will place our values, creativity and imagination at the heart of the reinvention of public life, successful economies, constructive civil discourse and a rich cultural infrastructure."

Read more about AHRC

We aim to embody this AHRC vision of innovative partnership, experimentation, interdisciplinary working, and creativity within the activities and projects we fund through the Impact Acceleration Account.

Dr Louise Rutt
Senior Impact and Knowledge Exchange Manager

The AHRC understand that these ideas and projects are developed through dialogue with user groups and key stakeholders across the range of sectors, including business, third sector and heritage sector, public policy, voluntary and community groups. Through identifying and engaging with potential partners at the earliest possible point, applicants will be able to devise projects that understand and are able to address shared challenges and opportunities for impact.

Although not limited by area of impact, we are particularly keen to see projects that respond to three core themes of digital and technological innovation; improving healthcare, health and quality of life; and developing shared understandings, visions, and actions for a sustainable future, and many of the funded projects in our portfolio respond to these themes.

Explore our projects

Searching for Leo

Georgian Sites

The Way We Live film still by Jill Craigie

The Way We Live Now

Mediating climate change: Intuitive interventions as defining strategies in visual arts

Ruptured Atlas

Scaling up climate education in schools

The Impact Award has allowed me to make connections with various collaborators that will carry on for years and allow me to develop other projects off this initial IAA funded project. It has also allowed me to experiment and try things, which has made a really big difference to my practice. And that is what is really good about the IAA, it allows room for experimentation and, from that, new opportunities can come along. So, the IAA allows you to see if the project has a longer future, which this project does. For me, it has been really positive.

Dr Heidi Morstang
Associate Professor in Photography

This was the first project that I worked on which was solely impact driven, and that was quite novel. Working in this way has given me a better understanding of the importance of impact and its significance in dislocating the outdated idea of a schism between academia and the wider community. We need to work more collaboratively with communities; I think this is certainly one trajectory that my research will now take.

Dr Nikolina Bobic
Lecturer in Architecture (History & Theory)

SHAPE disciplines address global challenges associated with marine, health and sustainability through the lens of place

Through five place-based research themes, we investigate the intricate relationships between communities, the natural world, and technology.
Locally, we co-create sustainable solutions to complex problems in order to build resilient and thriving neighbourhoods, cities, and regions. This work transcends geographical, social and political boundaries to become applicable on a global level.

Explore our research

SHAPE – Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy