The Communities Innovating Yorkshire Fund

The Yorkshire Policy Innovation Partnership (YPIP) is a UKRI-funded project operating in Yorkshire and The Humber, covering the 4 Mayoral Combined Authority areas of York and North Yorkshire, Hull and East Riding, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. 

The partnership brings together universities/academic research, local government and community organisations on place-based initiatives themed around: 

  • Inclusive economy  
  • Creative industries  
  • Climate 

The diverse stakeholders working across these will also have an input into creating a shared facility to access and analyse local and regional data sources. Community engagement and an inclusive voice based on lived experience cuts across all these themes.  

The project explores new ideas and practices through pilot initiatives, whilst also platforming innovative working within the region. The aim is to co-create collaborative spaces for replication and scaling up. 

YPIP is part of the Local Policy Innovation Partnership (LPIP) programme. 

The fund’s primary objectives and the initiatives it supports

A key element of YPIP is the £800k Communities Innovating Yorkshire Fund (CIYF). The aim of the CIYF is to support projects, studies, activities, and collaborations that: 

  • advance YPIP’s commitment to innovative approaches to inclusive growth, sustainable living, and data informatics 
  • include partnerships with – or significant input from – members of Yorkshire communities, and/or that deepen the capacity for the involvement of members of Yorkshire communities in policy innovation.  

 The CIYF particularly encourages: 

  • projects that focus on socially marginalized residents of the region– racial/ethnic or national minorities, women, residents of spatially isolated communities, those living in poverty and/or without adequate access to educational or vocational opportunities 
  • demonstrator projects, research addressing evidence gaps, the piloting or study of new approaches (or of existing approaches in new places). 

Full CIYF application guidance can be found below, along with example due diligence templates for organisations selected for funding. The level of due diligence required will depend on the funding amount and the nature of the organisation, and will form part of the onboarding process.

The 5 YPIP Themes

Communities Innovating Yorkshire Fund applications must select and have a leading focus on one of the 5 YPIP themes. Each theme is explained below:

Collecting and Utilising Community Data

Data gathered from communities plays a crucial role in the decision-making processes of local authorities and the long-term social, economic, and environmental vitality of the region. However, barriers such as difficulty in generating and accessing up-to-date data, lack of recognition for community-generated insights, and limited information sharing can prevent communities and policymakers from effectively innovating and collaborating with each other. 

As part of the Yorkshire Policy Innovation Partnership (YPIP), we invite applications for collaborative projects that aim to address the above-mentioned barriers by: 

  • exploring how data can be utilised to foster evidence-based decision-making for local communities and policymakers alike; 
  • finding novel ways of collecting and utilising data to support economic growth at local and regional levels, and/or; 
  • promoting the recognition and inclusion of community-generated data in policymaking. 

Regardless of whether the focus is on collecting, integrating, applying, or disseminating data, projects under this theme will contribute to building stronger connections between public organisations, businesses, and communities; ensuring that future innovations are equitable, data-driven, and impactful. 

Good Work and Better Business

Good work matters for the wellbeing of workers and success of businesses across the region. It is the foundation of an inclusive and sustainable economy. Businesses can play a key role in providing good work that benefits employees and creates a stable, productive and healthy workforce while providing job opportunities for underrepresented groups. 

However, too much work remains badly paid or insecure and the challenges and opportunities for engaging businesses in the good work agenda are not widely understood. By addressing these challenges, YPIP aims to empower local partners, stimulate innovation, influence policy change, and build a thriving and inclusive economy that benefits businesses, employees, and communities across the region. 

We invite applications that explore practical ways of promoting inclusive business practices and good work (e.g. fair pay, secure contracts, healthy working environments, work-life balance and worker voice). We are particularly interested in applications around four priorities (though welcome alternative suggestions): 

  • Foundational Economy: Identifying opportunities for good work in sectors where low-wage, low-productivity work is prevalent (e.g. social care, hospitality, retail, logistics). 
  • Inclusive recruitment: Developing more inclusive pathways into work for groups facing barriers in the labour market. 
  • Business support: Exploring opportunities to pivot business support towards inclusion goals. 
  • Work and health: Supporting employers to recruit and retain employees with health conditions and disabilities. 

Culture and the Creative Industry

Access to cultural experiences has the power to transform our lives, whether we are in an audience or involved in creative activity directly. Culture connects us to one another, opens new horizons and perspectives, it and builds confidence and skills. Culture is good for our wellbeing. But many people have limited access to cultural activity, not all communities’ cultures are recognised or valued and investment and engagement in cultural education and skills programmes has declined significantly in recent years. Earning a living as a creative is often precarious and insecure.  

The ambition of this theme is: 

  • to reaffirm the significance of culture in our lives and its importance to the prosperity of the UK;  
  • to look at the practical steps which can be taken to ensure everyone has the opportunity to take part in culture, whether they follow their passion and use their talents as a creative, paid/unpaid, or just love to watch, to listen, to read and enjoy.  

We would welcome applications which focus in 3 areas –

  • i) community definitions of and participation in culture
  • ii) widening education and employment pathways into the creative sector
  • iii) business support models for the creative sector.

Bids may include: evaluation of existing innovative models, deeper research around key challenges/issues or running of an innovative demonstrator project. 

Climate-Ready Places

A climate-ready place is one where carbon emissions are falling rapidly, nature is being restored, and people’s lives, livelihoods and infrastructure are adapting to the pressing challenges of the changing climate. It’s also about tackling inequalities: lower-income and spatially-isolated communities, who tend to be most at risk from climate change and whose places are often least climate ready, are often not heard by decision-makers. Innovative solutions are needed, and we want them to be shaped by those who are intended to benefit from the policies as they are implemented.

Current strands of this work include how heritage buildings (pre 1920) and Conservation Areas can become climate-ready, and how to effectively join up different land-use goals to make more progress on local nature recovery. Applications are welcome from collaborations that cover both the north and south bank of the Humber, as well as from Yorkshire.

We would especially welcome applications that can bring local, place & citizen-based knowledge into play in influencing policies. For example:

  • How do people with homes or businesses in older (pre-1920) or heritage settings want to upgrade their buildings? How are their decisions about upgrading shaped by how they use those buildings and their understanding of the available options and constraints? How do these issues manifest in heritage social housing?
  • How can people’s knowledge of their local green spaces, the needs of nature and their communities, be better used to shape policies and funding programmes for nature recovery and community amenity value? Can this be developed in a way that further enhances the benefits that green spaces provide, helping us adapt to climate change and a range of increasingly frequent extreme weather events?

Communities in Their Places

Communities sit at the frontline of experiencing the impact of economic and environmental issues. For marginalized and spatially isolated communities, this is doubly true. Yet, too often community preferences, experiences and voice are an afterthought and side-lined in both policy-making and research. The relationship is one that is often a lot of take and not a lot of give where communities are utilized for insight without recognition and shared ownership of research findings. 

Communities in Their Places seeks to redress that balance by placing communities at the heart of YPIP’s work alongside academics and policy makers exploring processes which enable all voices to be heard equitably. Key to this process is engaging communities in co-production research around topics that matter to them and for communities to be alongside academics and policy makers from the start rather than consulted later on.  

Applications would be welcomed that:  

  • Community-led and community co-designed research 
  • Focus on economic/environmental inequalities and the role of community voice 
  • Embed co-production with peer researchers   
  • Directly engage communities with policy makers and researchers to inform research led policy making. 

Apply for Funding

The Communities Innovating Yorkshire Fund offers two different funding pathways: 

Seedcorn funds of up to £10k 

This funding pathway is for small/pilot projects, to be inclusive of smaller, grassroots initiatives. Applications for seedcorn funding will enable organisations to develop/pilot their ideas. The purpose of the seedcorn round is to enable groups without prior experience of grant applications to have the opportunity to ‘learn by doing’. 

Larger project funds of up to £50k 

This funding pathway is for developing existing/more established ideas. Larger projects should propose ‘deeper dives’ into one or more of the five priority areas identified above. 

Applications close at 23:59 on Sunday 23 March 2025

We are hosting information webinars to share more details on the fund and application process:

General information session – Tuesday 4 March, 10am to 11am, Google Meet

Theme 1 ‘Collecting and Utilising Community Data’ specific information session – Wednesday 12 March, 10am to 11am, Google Meet

Please email ypip@leeds.ac.uk to sign up to attend

Submit your expression of interest


    Expressions of Interest


    We have a small team managing this fund and have organised information webinars to engage with those interested in the fund to answer generic questions.  Expressions of interest are to understand what additional questions are coming through to hopefully organise some webinars covering these. Unfortunately we do not have the capacity to answer case by case questions on project proposals and are doing our best to give as much support as we can.

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