City-REDI/WMREDI Round Up – March and April 2024

Events – presenting work / speaking engagements

• 22 March, Alice Pugh and Hannes Read presented at a National Civic Impact Accelerator event –  An Introduction to Developing Business Cases for Civic Engagement Projects.
• 9 April – Matt Lyons joined a workshop at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre on “Multi-regional input-output in research and development”.
• 18 April, City-REDI held its second academic seminar of the year with Dr Koen Bartels.
• 25 April, Y-Pern/City-REDI collaboration day, looking at models of place-based academic/policy activities.

Reports / publications released

• James Davies, Jon Morris and Gazi Islam have published an article called “The Search for Meaningful Work Under Neo-Bureaucracy: Work Precarity in Freelance TV” in the Journal of Organisation.
• Matt Lyons and Kevin Connolly (Strathclyde Chancellor’s Fellow Economics) have a report out with the Creative Industries and Policy Evidence Centre –  Improving economic statistics in the creative industries.
• Kostas Kollydas and Anne Green had a blog published on the HEPI site called “Addressing the divide: The impact of university-related migration on UK’s subregions and policy roadmap”. The blog discussed their recent study with Tony Champion “The gainers and losers from the United Kingdom’s university-related migration: A subregional analysis of Graduate Outcomes Survey data”.
• Johannes Read, Alice Pugh, George Bramley and Rebecca Riley have produced a new report for the National Civic Impact Accelerator – A review of the economic and social value produced through funding PhD students.

Awards/ Funding

• Charlotte Hoole and colleagues won the 2024 Regional Studies Association Best Paper Award for their paper “A Place-based System? Regional Policy Levers and the UK’s Productivity Challenge”.
• City-REDI won the 2024 Impact Award on Commerce, the Economy and Productivity, at the University of Birmingham’s annual award ceremony.

Policy Engagement

• 21 March, Anne Green and Rebecca Riley presented their experiences of working with combined authorities in the West Midlands at Nottingham Trent.
• 15 April – Anne Green and Rebecca Riley attended the NCIA Advisory Board.
• 16 April – Annum Rafique presented her work on Procurement and sustainability – evidence from retrofit at the IPEC Workshop “Public Procurement as a Catalyst for Innovation: Exploring Impacts, Measurement, and Best Practices ” held in Manchester.
• 17 April, Anne Green took part in a workshop for Insights North East called “Exploring the transformative potential of alternative economic development approaches”.
• 17 April, Rebecca Riley and Chloe Billing met with Alex Ademokun, Deputy Director of Place, Impact and Research, DSIT, to discuss the LPIP Hub Innovation activities and evidence review.
• 18 April, Anne Green presented at the Bristol Ideas event “Growth and Devolution in the West of England”.
• 24 April, Fumi Kitagawa hosted an event on Innovation for Skills with City-REDI, University of Birmingham; and Centre for Innovation Management Research (CIMR), Birkbeck, University of London; in collaboration with Innovation and Research Caucus.
• 25 April, Hannes Read will be taking part in a British Academy roundtable Universities as Social and Cultural Infrastructure: Connecting Different University Constituencies as part of his work with the National Civic Impact Accelerator.
• 25 April – Y-Pern/City-REDI collaboration day looking at models of place-based academic/policy activities