Recipients of London mayor’s £1m Resilience Fund named

Thirty-six of London’s best innovators have been selected by the mayor of London and Nesta Challenges to play a major role in the city’s recovery from Covid-19.

The tech start-ups will benefit from Sadiq Khan’s £1m Resilience Fund, delivered in partnership with Nesta Challenges.

Each innovator will work with a resilience partner – such as a local authority, public agency or charity in London – to create new ways of bolstering the city’s resilience and drive for growth.

‘The panel of judges had a formidable task before them, with many impressive applications, and they have selected an inspiring cohort of companies to help boost our city’s resilience,’ said Nesta Challenges’ managing director, Tris Dyson.

‘We are very excited to support these teams to develop their solutions and support London’s recovery this year.’

Among those chosen are:

• Activating High Streets:Working together with Ealing council, innovators Whythawk will build on an existing platform that uses open data on rental valuations, local authority ratepayers and employment and vacancies, to increase opportunities for employees and landlords and reduce vacancy rates.
• Improving Air Quality: Partners in Lambeth highlighted this is a significant challenge in the borough. BlockDox, a data-science SME, aims to create Healthy Air Quality Impacts in Lambeth (HEAL), which will provide state of the art modelling capability integrating outdoor air quality data with geopositioning data of vulnerable groups within Lambeth, and visualising that data in a dashboard interface, to help the borough analyse and make adjustments to improve air quality in the area.
• Supporting the gig economy:Being so integral to the life of London during the pandemic, gig economy workers will be given greater tools to understand their pay, cross-reference the best opportunities around and learn from data insights about their roles and the economy as a whole. This is part of the offering from one of the tech innovators, Workerbird, who will work with the Living Wage Foundation to empower gig economy workers with their own data.

‘We must all work together to build a brighter, greener and more equal future for London after the pandemic. I’m confident these dynamic start-ups and their partners will develop creative solutions to support London’s recovery and help our city remain resilient for years to come,’ said the London mayor.

A list of innovators and interactive map showing the challenges, partners and innovators across London has been created to help the public find out more information.

Click here for more information.

Photo Credit – Pixabay