USE-IT! project - University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham, as part of a consortium bid led by Birmingham City Council, has won funding totalling €3.64m from the EU (ERDF) Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) programme to deliver USE-IT! (Unlocking Social and Economic Innovation Together).

The UIA programme provides urban areas throughout Europe with resources to test new and unproven solutions to solve their urban challenges. USE-IT! is about developing new mechanisms to unlock the potential of poor communities and connect them to the resources they need to remain resilient and escape poverty. We aimed to encourage sustainable urban development and make sure that regeneration benefits are delivered to local communities, while at the same time empowering local people to create the conditions to stimulate social and economic innovation.

Funder/client: EU (ERDF) Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) programme

Timescale: 2016 - 2020

Objective

This project was a cross-university, multi-disciplinary team led by the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) and the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) with support from the Third Sector Research Sector (TSRC) and City-REDI. These organisations aimed to deliver work embedding and pioneering community-based research, developing modules to tackle poverty by connecting residents to urban development opportunities. They also evaluated the programme, including modelling macro micro-skills and poverty.

Research Team

Project Lead, Dr Peter Lee, GEES/CURS, University of Birmingham
Evaluation Lead, Rebecca Riley, City-REDI, University of Birmingham
Dr Sara Hassan, Research Fellow, City-REDI, University of Birmingham
Dr Deniz Sevinc, Assistant Professor in Industrial Economics, Business and Labour Economics Group, University of Birmingham
Liam O’Farrell, Researcher, University of Sheffield