Agenda item

            The Committee was informed that the Smart Belfast Urban Innovation programme encouraged collaboration between government, industry, SMEs, academia, and communities. The aim was to harness digital innovation to address public policy challenges, while at the same time encouraging greater investment in innovation to stimulate economic growth. The following update outlines two initiatives that would contribute to these aims:

            Inclusive Innovation Workshop

            The Deputy Chief Executive reminded Members that they had previously approved a city partner workshop to be held to explore the opportunities for ‘inclusive innovation’; what it means; why it’s important; and how it can help to unlock more local economic and social value from innovation investments such as Belfast Region City Deal and planned major investments by the UK Government in innovation over the next four years. 

            Invitations had been extended to all Members, community organisations, industry, public and university partners (with 70 participants currently confirmed).  It would take place on 28th January at the Titanic Hotel from 9.15 am. The agenda had been developed with the Belfast Innovation Commissioner, Adrian Johnston, who would be chairing the event. It would feature local and national speakers who would share their experiences and perspectives on inclusive innovation. This would include the Council’s own four-year Hubs of Innovation project with the Maritime Belfast Trust; research by King’s Collegewhich had been working with Catalyst on measuring inclusive innovation; Newcastle Upon Tyne’s i30 research programme (which was looking at practice in Newcastle, Belfast, Medellin, and Pittsburgh); and Queen's University’s Communities and Place programme.

            The workshop, which was mainly funded by Horizon 2020, would help inform a future programme of work led by the Innovation Commissioner and the City Innovation Office. Members were encouraged to come along.

            ‘Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayoral Challenge’ competition

            This global innovation competition opened every few years and provided city governments with up to $1 million and multi-year support to transform an essential, city-wide public service.

            The competition was delivered in two stages: Phase 1 provides up to $50,000 to 50 cities to refine and test their initial ideas (March 2025.) While Phase 2 would provide 25 of these cities with a further $1 million to bring their ideas to life. (Phase 2 awards would be made in October 2025.)

            The deadline for submission was 20 December, which had given Council officers very little time to prepare an application that would meet Bloomberg’s detailed criteria and not affording time to submit this first iteration of the application to the Committee in advance.  Officers had therefore focused on areas that aligned to areas of work already agreed by Members. Following an ideation process, that included discussions with the Bloomberg team in New York, the Belfast application focused on re-imagining the city’s alleyways. The idea was to develop a mechanism that would allow the Council and other bodies, including social enterprises, to work directly with communities to sustainably manage city alleyways to promote biodiversity, cultural activities, to encourage active travel, and, by doing so, crowd out anti-social behaviour. This would build on an existing priority of Members and the existing work of the Parks Outreach Team, the Climate team and others.

            Accordingly, the Deputy Chief Executive asked the Committee to note the application, and that any decision on whether Belfast had made it through to the first phase was expected in March 2025 at which point, if selected to progress to the next stage, the proposal would be brought back to Members for further consideration.

            The Committee noted:

1.      the details of the Inclusive Innovation workshop and the invitation to Members; and

2.      that Belfast City Council had applied to the Bloomberg Mayoral Challenge competition to support work on re-imagining city alleyways and that the Deputy Chief Executive would provide Members with details of the Bloomberg application