Call for Workshop Proposals

In 2024, the ICC project will fund workshops across the U.S. that explore support for innovation at the intersection of culture, creativity and technology.  Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and coordinated by a team from UCLA and UC Santa Barbara, the ICC Workshops will gather experts in arts, humanities, science, engineering, innovation studies, urban planning, and other disciplines to identify regional opportunities, as well as those for distributed communities-of-practice. Workshop results will be brought together in a national convening at the end of 2024.  The national convening will identify common themes and actionable opportunities for NSF, particularly the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) directorate, which funds this effort. 

March 11, 2024: The invited concept outlines have been posted.

For questions about this call not answered below, email icc@remap.ucla.edu.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who should apply?
We encourage workshop proposals from a wide variety of organizations across industry, government, academia, and other non-profit organizations particularly involving organizers who may not have previously participated in NSF-supported research.

When are the deadlines?
Concept outlines were due by February 16, 2024. A subset of proposers will be notified by the end of February and invited to submit full proposals on April 15, 2024. Detailed instructions are below. 

Which concept outlines were selected?
Please see the Invited Workshop Concept Outlines page.

How much funding is available?
Approximately five workshops will be funded for at most $75,000 each.  Budgets must be well justified and will be carefully examined.

What should proposals focus on?
Workshops should focus on innovation opportunities in a specific geographic region. More details are given below. 

What if we have a nationwide group?
A small number of awards will be considered for distributed communities-of-practice¹ (DCoPs) relevant to the topic area whose participants are widely distributed over the U.S. 

Can workshops be remote?
Workshops should be held in-person, but organizers may support hybrid participation. Fully remote workshops will be considered only for DCoP proposals. 

What size and length should the workshops be?
This is up to the proposing team.  We expect that workshops would typically involve 50-75 participants convening over about 1.5 days. This provides adequate time for vibrant interactions among the group.

Who should be invited to participate in the workshops?
As described later in the call, workshops should involve experts and stakeholders from diverse disciplinary, demographic, and cultural backgrounds, experiences, sectors, and practices.  

Who selects which workshops will be funded?
Workshops will be panel reviewed based on the requirements of this call (below), with funding decisions made by the ICC project principal investigators.   

What are the deliverables?
Workshop deliverables include a written report and proposals for activities at the national convening. More details are below.

Can organizations submit more than one proposal?
Updated January 22, 2024 – There is no restriction at the concept outline stage, though organizations with more than one submission may be asked to consolidate at the invited proposal stage. For concept outlines, the PI and Co-PI should only appear on one outline. For full eligibility information, see below.

What if I have other questions?
Updated February 27, 2024 – First, please review the rest of the call below.  Questions can be sent to icc@remap.ucla.edu. A webinar for those invited to submit a proposal will be held:

• Tuesday, April 2, 10:30A-12:00P Pacific (Registration link)

Recordings of the webinar will be posted on the ICC website. Two informational webinars were previously held for those interested in submitting a concept outline: Thursday, January 25, 10:00-11:30A Pacific (Recording) and Monday, February 5, 1:00-2:30P Pacific (Recording).

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Workshop Proposal Overview

We are soliciting workshop proposals to convene a diverse, multidisciplinary group of experts and stakeholders with backgrounds in STEM and/or in the production and study of culture, including the academic arts and humanities and the creative industries. 

Workshops must be responsive to the ICC project goals, desired outcomes, and background. Please be sure to review these.

Themes, Topics, and Technologies

Proposals encouraged to explore regional needs, opportunities, and challenges, focus on technology priority areas² of the CHIPS and Science Act, and explore some or all of the following topics: 

• Improving the sustainability, relevance, and impact of regional innovation ecosystems³ through their integration with the study, reception, production, and preservation of culture. This may require broadening the concept of “innovation ecosystem” itself. 
• Supporting translational research in the humanities and arts that applies their bodies of knowledge and evolving ways of working to address societal and economic challenges, enable technology discovery and deployment, and preserve, sustain, and enhance the fields themselves.
• Broadening participation in applied STEM research to include the creative industries and cultural organizations–for example, by addressing resource differentials; developing mutual benefit frameworks; supporting cross-disciplinary skills development; offering evidence of impact on diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM; and identifying key differences in how R&D is defined, managed, budgeted, and evaluated.
• Strengthening U.S. creative industry participation in collaborative technology research with academia, non-profit, and other industries in order to sustain and enhance global competitiveness in the sector.
• Encouraging engagement on dimensions of ethics and responsibility informed by the humanities and arts, including sustainability, equity, protections for participant privacy and dignity, and awareness of local cultural contexts. In this context, please see the recently announced NSF program on Responsible Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies (ReDDDoT), and the related NSF press release.
• Supporting new, innovative forms of entrepreneurial activity with models specific to culture–for example, supporting the intersection of emerging technologies and methods with those of artists, artisans, and/or craft entrepreneurs.

To help with idea generation, the ICC team brainstormed some example workshop titles suggesting the intersection between technology, culture, and region. They are linked here.

Workshops should consider results from related workshops supported by NSF and other agencies, National Academies studies⁴, regional government reports, work supported by major philanthropic foundations in the topic areas, and similar sources. Proposals should compare and contrast their work with such prior efforts.

Expected Outcomes and Deliverables

Awarded teams are wholly responsible for the organization of their workshop. The structure of the workshop is at the discretion of the workshop organizers.

Each awarded team will be required to provide four deliverables to the ICC project office after their workshop concludes: 

1. A draft set of notes and attendee list immediately at workshop completion to support planning for the national convening; 
2. Participants’ session proposals for the national convening;
3. A brief final report to be made available to the public; 
4. An opt-in list of participants and contact information for further communications.  

Other deliverables may be collaboratively identified at the time of the award. Deliverables will be shared with NSF and used for planning the national convening, which may involve sharing deliverables with organizers of the other workshops. 

Note:  All workshops must include a mechanism to generate session proposals for the national convening. Session proposals constitute topics, challenges, and project ideas that are generated through workshop activities and that workshop participants feel have merit to drive new forms of creative innovation.  

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Proposal Process

The workshop proposal process will have the following steps:

1. Interested teams should start by submitting a concept outline by February 16, 2024.  (Further instructions are below.) 
2. A subset of teams will be invited by the end of February to submit workshop proposals, which will be due on April 15, 2024.  
3. Concept outlines and contact information for invited proposals will be published on the ICC website to encourage coordination and participation. 
4. Proposals will undergo panel review, and awards will be announced in May 2024. 
5. Workshops must be completed by the end of September 2024. 

Eligibility and Participation

Proposals must identify a lead organization that will receive the funds and be responsible for running the workshop. This organization must be based in the U.S. and be capable of acting as a subawardee on a federal grant.  Proposals from individuals are not allowed. 

Team formation and participant recruitment do not need to be complete at the concept outline stage. Invited concept outlines will be posted publicly to encourage cross-team communication. The ICC project team may also make recommendations and referrals for collaborations. 

The ICC project is interested in having a broad and multidisciplinary group of participants across the workshops. Proposing teams are encouraged to include organizers and participants who: 

• Cover a variety of relevant professional roles in culture, the arts, humanities, creative industry, and STEM;
• Have significant experience with NSF and/or other federal science and technology research support; 
• Have not received NSF funding before in significant roles. 

Proposers are encouraged to organize workshops involving researchers, educators, and practitioners from academia, industry (including small businesses), Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), regional and local government, and non-profit organizations. We encourage academic participants from a diverse set of institutions, including community colleges and other non-R1 institutions, minority-serving IHEs, tribal colleges and universities, institutions in EPSCoR states, and primarily undergraduate institutions. Workshop participation must be offered free of charge for participants. 

An individual may appear on a maximum of one workshop proposal in a senior role (PI, co-PI, or Senior Personnel). All members of the Organizing Committee must be engaged in formulating, executing, and reporting on the workshop. Engagement of international researchers in workshops is allowed, but budgetary support is limited to U.S. participants. 

Please note that, in order to avoid conflicts of interest: 

• Workshop proposals with senior personnel (members of the proposed workshop’s organizing committee) from UCLA or UCSB will not be allowed.
• Workshop proposals with senior personnel from organizations on the ICC advisory committee are allowed, but advisory committee members themselves may not act as senior personnel. 

Submitting a concept outline

A concept outline must be submitted as a first step by any interested team. 

• Concept outlines are strictly limited in length to 3000 characters (about 500 words) and in plain text (no formatting or graphics).  Optionally, teams can provide a single “hero image” that may be included in public listings.
• Concept outlines must be submitted using UCLA’s InfoReady system by 5 p.m. of the submitter’s local time on February 16, 2024.   
• The concept outline should briefly address each topic listed under “Proposal Requirements” below. 
• A minimum of one principal investigator (PI) from the lead organization and one co-PI from a collaborating organization must be associated with a concept outline.  The PI and co-PIs may not be associated with other concept outlines.⁵  
• A budget is not required. The concept outline should briefly discuss how funds will be used. 

Submitted concept outlines will be published with contact information to encourage team formation and collaboration. Please do not include proprietary information in concept outlines.

Concept outlines must be submitted here:
https://ucla.infoready4.com/#freeformCompetitionDetail/1927522

To submit, first create an InfoReady account by selecting the “Register” option here. After creating an account, visit the link above and log in with the account you have created. Email icc@remap.ucla.edu if you have questions about establishing an account.

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Proposal Requirements

A subset of teams will be invited to submit a full workshop proposal based on their concept outline.  We will notify teams of an invitation to submit a full proposal about 2-3 weeks after submission of the concept outline. 

Invited teams must submit their full workshop proposal no later than April 15, 2024 AOE (anywhere on earth). All workshop proposals must be submitted via the UCLA InfoReady proposal system.  Further instructions on submission will be provided to invited teams. 

Workshop proposals will be internally panel reviewed.  Workshop proposals that were not invited based on a concept outline or fail to address the requirements described in this CFP will be returned without review. 

Format and Sections

Workshop proposals must be prepared as a single document in PDF format, no longer than four pages, excluding budget and references, in 11pt or larger type, with 1” margins. Only the following sections, each identified by a heading and in the same order listed below, must be included.  

• Title, Principal Investigator, and Lead Organization: Descriptive title, the name and title of the principal investigator, and the lead organization.
• Region / Community-of-Practice: Definition of the region or DCoP¹ served by the workshop.  Teams are free to define their region as appropriate for their proposal – e.g., a group of counties, metro area, federal census region, GSA region, cultural region, and so on.⁷
• Workshop Approach and Topics:  Summary vision statement and brief overview of workshop topics, which should respond to the CFP above. This section should introduce and motivate specific areas of focus as well as the evidence base to be used as a starting point for the workshop.  The team’s working definitions for key terms, such as “innovation ecosystem”, should be outlined, as well as the approach to creating an inclusive and accessible workshop environment.  
• Organizing Committee:  Summary of the proposing team, their relevant experience, and responsibilities for the workshop and its deliverables. Each proposal must identify a single PI who will be responsible for the subaward funding. At least one Co-PI from another organization must also be identified.  
• Participants:  Summary of intended number, type, and expertise of participants, how they will be recruited, and any confirmed participants beyond the proposing team. As a baseline, workshops are expected to have 50-75 participants. Proposals should articulate how attendees will be recruited and selected in a way that creates cross-disciplinary and cross-silo opportunities.  Workshops should be prepared to accommodate no more than two representatives each from the ICC project and from NSF as observers/participants, for a total of no more than four. Note: The ICC PIs and NSF will review and approve the final participant lists for funded workshops, and may provide suggestions on additional invitations. 
• Venue, Date, and Logistics:  A draft agenda for the workshop should be provided, along with the planned venue, dates, and other relevant logistical details. Workshops are expected to last about one and a half days.  All workshops must be held in the U.S., and organizers should plan to hold them in-person with hybrid options. (DCoP workshops may be proposed as fully remote, but please note that only a small number of DCoP workshops will be considered.) Workshops must be completed no later than September 30, 2024. 
• Diversity of Participation: In up to 200 words, proposers should summarize how their workshop approach contributes to the project’s overall goal of involving regions with diverse geographies, cultures, and economies. It should also explain specific methods used to bring participants of diverse perspectives and disciplines together and address NSF’s broader commitment to expand opportunities in STEM “to people of all racial, ethnic, geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities and to persons with disabilities.” This section should discuss the proposing team and organizations, intended workshop participants, and regional stakeholders.  
• Intellectual Merit: In up to 200 words, proposers should summarize how their workshop will 1) build on existing research to examine the roles that culture and cultural production can play in strengthening specific innovation ecosystems relative to their region or DCoP; 2) build on recommendations from the National Academies, successful initiatives in other countries, and/or hands-on experience of regional participants to envision programs in support of the continued competitiveness of the creative sector; 3) explore novel strategies to expand and diversify the STEM workforce through support and engagement with fields at the intersection of technology, culture, and creativity.
• Broader Impact: In up to 200 words, proposers should summarize 1) how their workshop will identify strategies to bring the U.S. creative sector into stronger, more productive, and sustained relationships with STEM research, innovation, and/or workforce development; 2) specific strategies to engage stakeholders working at the intersection of traditional skills and crafts with modern computational techniques; and 3) potential long-term benefits for the region should the workshop and subsequent programs be successful.
• References:  Full citations for any references cited should be provided in a final section. 

Workshops are required to have a policy or code-of-conduct that clarifies the expectations of behavior to foster a harassment-free environment, the method for recording and resolving complaints, and a plan for disseminating this information. (See Chapter XI.A.1.g of the NSF Proposals and Awards Policies and Procedures Guide).

Budget

Further instructions on budgeting will be provided to teams invited to submit a workshop proposal. Workshop budget requests must not exceed $72,500, including both direct and indirect costs. Up to an additional $2,500 will be provided to proposals with a specific plan for accessibility services.⁸ 

Budget categories include: senior personnel / workshop organizers, staff, venue and related costs, participant travel support, accessibility services, materials and supplies, and indirect costs (overhead).  Budgets must be well justified and will be carefully examined. Participant support should be prioritized for participants from emerging research institutions, non-profit partners, and others with limited resources.  Given the regional focus, individual travel support is expected to be limited.

Indirect costs should be charged at the lead organization’s federally negotiated rate or use the 10% de minimis rate.

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Endnotes

1. DCoPs are geographically distributed groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or topical interests and exchange ideas, share methodology, standardize approaches, and build community capacity.  Examples relevant to the Workshop call include disability innovation groups, open source arts software communities, and technology alliances focused on access and inclusion. ↩︎
2. Artificial Intelligence, High Performance Computing, Quantum Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Disaster Prevention, Advanced Communications, Cybersecurity, Biotech, Advanced Energy Efficiency, and Material Science. ↩︎
3. By innovation ecosystem, we mean the individuals, organizations, and processes involved in creating tangible societal benefits from new knowledge and inventions that emerge from research.  (See the Congressional Research Service report, Regional Innovation: Federal Programs and Issues for Considerations, April 3, 2023. While most writing on regional / placed-based innovation ecosystems emphasizes economic benefits, we encourage proposers to consider other societal benefits as well, and to adapt the term’s definition accordingly in their proposal. ↩︎
4. For example, Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity (2003) and Branches from the Same Tree: A National Convening on the Integration of the Arts, Humanities, and STEMM in Higher Education (2020). ↩︎
5. To encourage submissions, we have removed a restriction on how many concept outlines an organization may participate in. During the proposal invitation process, we may require organizations to consolidate proposals if they have submitted more than one concept outline. ↩︎
6. DCoPs are geographically distributed groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or topical interests and exchange ideas, share methodology, standardize approaches, and build community capacity.  Examples relevant to the Workshop call include disability innovation groups, open source arts software communities, and technology alliances focused on access and inclusion. ↩︎
7. This flexibility was a “key takeaway” from a recent Council on Competitiveness working group. ↩︎
8. Such services may include  ASL interpretation, live captioning, childcare, quiet rooms, or other accommodations based on participant needs. This resource from Carolyn Lazard may be helpful in planning. ↩︎