Academics consume and create data in ever increasing quantities. Petabyte-scale data is no longer unusual on a project level, and even more common when looking at outputs of whole research institutions. Despite the large amounts of data being produced, data curation is relatively less well developed. In 2014 Imperial College London ran a research data management (RDM) pilot. Designed as a bottom-up, academically-driven initiative, six “Green Shoots” projects were funded to identify and generate exemplars of best practice in RDM. The Green Shoots form part of a wider programme designed to help the College to develop a suitable RDM infrastructure and to embed best practice across the university. This article sets out the context for the initiative, describes the development of the pilot, summarises the individual projects and discusses lessons learned.