Get Involved Awards - 2023

1. Dr Jasmine Kelland and Lauren Packham, Pillars of Wellness and Wellbeing CIC

Researching the real-life impacts of being a working parent and what we can do to improve their mental health and wellbeing. The project explores potential relationships and perceptions between single working mother status and how they could improve their wellbeing. This research will help understand the potential barriers to accessing wellbeing and mental health interventions and find practical solutions.

2. Ms Penelope Welbourne and Nicola Lambert, Plymouth Highbury Trust Parent Project.

This project explores ways of making community and statutory services more responsive to the positive parenting potential of many parents with learning disabilities. Establishing whether the parenting assessment “journey” is of quality and timed appropriately. Developing training materials to help people understand what is helpful when working with parents with a learning disability. Offer support and knowledge in accessing facilities already in use such as libraries, sports, and advice centres.

3. Dr Angela Piccini with Adam Milford and Chloe Hughes, The Box Foundation

This research investigates what “centres” a community – is it a building, a place, a memory, or a culture? Through a series of community-based sharing sessions and archive film screenings in the city, Community Centre/s will invite people to uncover and share amateur home videos within private collections, to explore stories and memories connected to things that no longer exist or have undergone major change. The project engages in creative remixing of both private and archival collections to develop new visions for a shared future.

4. Professor Katharine Willis and Hannah Sloggett, Nudge Community Builders.

This project takes open source/free to use technology and contributes to grassroots innovation in a sustainable way. The research has enabled Nudge to explore models that create more sustainable governance and ways of operating that can scale and strengthen the offer, whilst fostering an accessible and inclusive approach to digital skills in a disadvantaged community.

5. Dr Sophie Fauset and Ele Waters, Tregovenek Community Farm

Project Title: Planting Hope with Muddy Hands

This scientific work assesses above and below ground carbon stocks within Tregovenek, informing future land management at the site and engaging the local community with positive solutions to the climate and biodiversity crisis. The work is utilising a co-design approach, whereby site managers and volunteers assist with data sampling design and collection. The project engages the wider community and local school with active participation such as tree planting.

6. Carl Evans with Nigel Jackson and Wailim Wong, Citizens Advice South Hams (CASH)

Project Title: Local Housing Allowance Campaign

This project informs CASH about the effects of the continuing Government freeze re Local Housing Allowance (LHA) on local tenants on benefits and aims to provide statistical and qualitative information for the redrawing of boundaries used to find average rents to set LHA and to demonstrate why LHA needs to be increased. The research looks at alternative, realistic market areas that the Valuation Office could use to calculate average rents in Devon and Cornwall.

7. Alison Anderson and Patrick Holden with Ed Whitelaw, Real ideas Organisation CIC

This project researches and develops deliberate democracy approaches to community-led urban nature renewal in the public realm, using open-source, artificial intelligence platform Polis to inform new approaches to e-democracy. Polis will examine Devonport resident’s views about nature and their environment. It will identify areas of consensus/conflict and inform actions. The research will combine qualitative, quantitative, and participatory methods and generate a real-time visual map of patterns of agreement and disagreement as the discussion evolves.

7. Lauren Ansell with Dan Godfrey, PEC Trust (Plymouth Energy Community)

Project Title: Retrofit Credits

This project explores the concept of carbon offset credits generated through housing retrofit activities. A methodology and a platform already exist, but PEC are going to look at how this could be applied in Plymouth. This research will combine specialist analysis of existing datasets to establish the number of properties requiring different combinations of measures and the carbon savings that are likely to result from their implementation.