NESTA are a funding body in the UK.
They fund all kinds of things in a wide variety of fields, they regularly commision research, and they organise events that are run on the UK national scale. The projects they fund must have some relation to Science, Technology and the Arts, the STA part of the name. You’ll find their About page here, and history here.
I receive the regular mail-shot they send out every couple of weeks. It usually mentions what competitions they are funding, what research they want done, and success stories about the companies they’ve funded through the Incubators they back.
I’ll post the things that i think are of interest to other Edgeryders.
I don’t know what they are called, but there will be equivalent organisations in other EU countries. Could other people do the same for those organisations in their own countries?
Research on Innovation Agencies. I think that this was put out to tender a few months ago. If i’d caught this in time, then i’d have suggested this as a UK tender that Edgeryders should have put a bid in for.
The DIY Tool-Kit. This is a set of tools for development workers that they brought out last year. The project was part-funded by the Rockefeller foundation. Main website is here.
The Creative Enterprise Program. They run events and courses all over the UK, and with their Open Data policy, they make all of their documentation publically accessible. They just released their Peer Coaching Manual.in the last week of March.
@Nadia, this might be worth a look for the P2P education project.
@Alberto, Because we’ve worked successfully on a Rockefeller Foundation project already, it’ll give some extra credibility, when tendering for the research contracts they commision.