My winning proposal: Even in the arts, big bids are team efforts

Teamwork and patience paid off in the Royal College of Music’s first major musicological bid

Top tips:

• Plan in detail what each member of your team will be doing, create a timetable and coordinate with external project partners about events and costs
• Consider setting up an advisory group which can support the grant application at varying stages of the process and offer feedback
• Major research projects need to be embedded in a community of stakeholders rather than just one’s own research interest
• When deciding which research avenues to pursue in large projects, take the time to think about which research would be most relevant to the largest number of people

Open year-round for bids of between £50,000 and £1 million, the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Standard Grants support a wide variety of projects, including several at the very top end of the funding scale for arts research projects.