National PPI Festival Fund 2025

The PPI Ignite Network @ University of Galway is delighted to announce the launch of our second National PPI Festival Fund , applications are now open please read below to read more about the Festival Fund.

The overarching goal of this seed funding is to to offer supports of €1000 to assist University of Galway staff or students, all patient & community organisations and individual PPI contributors to host a National PPI Festival event in October that aligns with the festival’s aims (see National PPI Festival 2025 Guidance Document for detail).

The support funds can be used for a wide variety of purposes, including refreshments and catering, design and print, creating accessible information, venue hire, PPI contributor involvement, equipment hire, facilitators hire, interpreters hire, and software or equipment costs. The Festival Fund is for National PPI Festival activities only and cannot be used to fund a research project or to cover staff costs.

What is the National PPI Festival?

The fourth National PPI Festival will take place from 1-31 October 2025. It is a national celebration of progress in Public and Patient Involvement in Research (PPI) in Ireland, where people from all over Ireland can meet others interested in PPI to share their experiences, learn from each other and help progress PPI in research in Ireland further.

The Festival, coordinated by the PPI Ignite Network @ RCSI, under the motto 'Celebrating our history, embracing our future' aims to:

• Celebrate PPI progress to date.
• Provide opportunities to foster existing relationships.
• Broaden out to connect with the research community not currently involved.
• Increase overall public awareness of PPI.
• Allow a creative space for innovation.

Application Requirements

By receiving support from the Festival Fund, successful applicants agree to host an event or activity between the 1st-31st of October 2025 which abides by the National PPI Festival Guidelines. By the end of the year, applicants will write a short overview or case study of the event which will be uploaded onto the university of Galway PPI website, previous Festival Fund events can be found here. Festival funds must be spent for the specified purpose.

Who Can Apply?

This call is open to

• University of Galway staff and students from any discipline
• All patient & community organisations
• Individual members of the public / PPI contributors

Applications Now Open for 2025

Key Dates and Times

• Call Open to Applicants 14th July 2025
• Call deadline 18th August 2025
• Assessment of call Within 2 weeks of call close
• Awardees Notified 1st September 2025
• Event hosted 1st-31st of October 2025
• Event overview published End of year 2025

The Application form is available here: Festival Funding 2025 Application Form

Please review this document for further details and application requirements here: National PPI Festival Fund 2025 guidance document

Submission Instructions

Due date 18th August 2025 by 5:00PM

Submit one consolidated PDF of the full application requirements.

Email PDF applications to john.gaffey@universityofgalway.ie and enter 'National PPI Festival Fund' in the subject line.

Application Assessment Procedure

All applications will be assessed by the internal team of the PPI Ignite Network @ University of Galway based on the proposed event’s alignment with the National PPI Festival.

Where there are more than three eligible applications, the final awardees will be decided by lottery draw.

For queries and questions relating to this call, please email National PPI Festival Funding coordinator John Gaffey: john.gaffey@universityofgalway.ie