Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travelling Fellowships

Why apply?

“The Fellowship was one of the best experiences of my life. Even after five years, the connections, the people, the learning and the feelings that I experienced still influence me today.” Police Constable Mark Walsh, Fellow

A Churchill Fellowship is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to expand your professional and personal horizons by researching an issue that you care about, with the global leaders in that subject, anywhere in the world.

We will fund you to spend up to two months overseas, meeting experts, visiting projects and learning new ideas. And when you return, we will help you to use what you’ve learnt to make change happen in your sector or community.

Not only that, the status of being a Churchill Fellow can open doors in your workplace, your sector and around the world. It gives you the credentials, knowledge and confidence to progress a cause that's close to your heart.

After their journeys, Fellows tell us they feel recharged and inspired. They value the time to think, learn and take stock of their subject and their career. They come home with new perspectives and directions – and the drive to put them into practice.

Fellows go on to become experts and leaders in their fields, set up projects and organisations, and influence practice and policy in their workplace, region and even across the nation. We choose them for their ideas and commitment and we back them every step of the way – because a Churchill Fellowship is for life.

Travel to learn

We fund this mission with a travel grant to spend four to eight weeks overseas, researching a project of their own choosing – one they believe can make a major difference to their profession or community when they return.

For example, a Fellow might be a firefighter who has discovered that basic medical training for his colleagues could save lives at an incident scene, or an architect keen to design better buildings for people with dementia. Ranging across many of today’s most important issues, the Fellows are uniquely qualified by their real-life experience to find new answers to key questions.

They do this by visiting the best places in the world to find those answers. Each Fellow may travel to many countries and continents to see the most innovative projects, meet the most inspiring practitioners, and study the most successful policy programmes worldwide.

All over the world, the Churchill name opens doors to knowledge – from Twitter’s headquarters in California to a refugee camp in Jordan, from police stations in Australia to hill farms in Romania. The selection of topics and destinations is universal.

Return to inspire

This is the range of global learning that our Fellows bring back to benefit the UK. On their return, they publish their findings in a detailed written report and put their recommendations into action.

For some this means starting an organisation, a business or an issue-based campaign. Others change professional practice across their workplace or their entire sector. Many succeed in influencing public policy at regional or national level, reaching as high as Downing Street itself.

We support their implementation with whatever assistance is required, whether post-travel grants or personal briefings with ministers, professional conferences or coverage in the media. And we stand by to help through the years to come, as they continue to make a practical and often profound contribution to the progress of their chosen field.

We track Fellows’ progress over many years and find that the effect on their sectors, as well as on themselves, can be profound. Many go on to become experts in their field, leaders of programmes and organisations, and opinion-formers in their areas. Decades later, they are still drawing on the insights and acceleration that their Fellowship provided.