ARC Blog, News

The ARC 2022 Pitch Final

We are extremely happy to announce the results of the 2022 Pitch Final. A big congratulations to Nicola Banks, Lucy Kelly and David Rosenthal for winning a combined £90,000!

On October 20th, our ARC finalists competed for a total prize of £90,000 during the 2022 Pitch Final. In their pitches, they had to prove that there is a market for their venture and that they have a well thought out plan for their venture’s future as well as for using the prize money to further develop their business.

We are very proud to be able to showcase the work of nine impactful ventures that address challenges ranging from climate change and diversity to sexual harassment and wellbeing. Our 2022 finalists and their ventures include:

William Short (University of Exeter) – Senseful AI
Anna Bull (University of York) – The 1752 Group
Daniele Fanelli (London School of Economics and Political Science) – comCensus
Lucy Kelly (Bristol University) – Reimagining the Diary
David Rosenthal (University of Exeter) – Hidden Cities
Du Liu (University of Oxford) – OxValue.AI
Alexander Shenkin (University of Oxford) – SilvaFlux
Doris Ruth Eikhof (University of Glasgow) – Everyday Diversity
Nicola Banks (University of Manchester) – One World Together

This year’s judges, Yumi Tsoy from Bethnal Green Ventures and Jack Ford from K3 Capital PLC, were tasked with selecting the winners based on whose ideas could progress on a business level with the help of the prize money. Yumi and Jack were unanimous in emphasising how difficult it was to judge the ventures due to the high quality and diversity of presented ventures.

The individual pitches have been uploaded in the news section and interviews with all finalists can be found under case studies. We are extremely proud of the amazing performance of the entire 2022 cohort and all the work they have done over the course of the ARC programme.

A huge congratulations to the three winners of the ARC 2022 Pitch Final:

Nicola Banks from the University of Manchester secured £45,000 for her social enterprise One World Together;
Lucy Kelly from Bristol University won £30,000 for her teacher wellbeing project Reimagining the Diary;
David Rosenthal from the University of Exeter was awarded £15,000 for his Hidden Cities apps that offer mobile storytelling on historic maps.

We are grateful to Research England and the Economic and Social Research Council for their generous support of the ARC programme. We would also like to thank Roger Frosh for his excellent work preparing the participants for the Pitch Final.


Photo credit: Kate P via Unsplash