Giving connections room to grow

After a year of fostering partnerships with LEEDS 2023, Leeds City Council and Y-PERN, we launched the Horizons Connect fund to help research-aligned colleagues at University of Leeds explore early-stage partnerships with the third sector locally, nationally and internationally.

For each project team, this is the first time that they are formally working together. The fund aims to provide resource and space for them to explore shared areas of collaboration and ways of working, without the time pressures of grant deadlines, with a view to creating more equitable and successful partnerships longer-term.

The following four interdisciplinary partnership projects have now been selected for funding, exploring new connections in climate action and the arts, community action to reduce carbon emissions, sustainable cooling in India, and improving access to land for food production.

Act and Reflect — A youth led arts-based research project investigating the narratives of climate action and their impact in Otley

Dr Matthew Elliott, Martina Ricci, Andrew Howarth

Research has found that there is a significant gap between the amount of evidence provided on climate change and resulting positive behaviours, and a rejection of action-focused and quantitative narratives of climate change.

This project will use environmental studies, applied theatre and third-sector knowledges to explore the development of a creative and reflective youth space to envisage localised climate action.

The research team says: “As a collaborative team, we are excited about the prospect of combining applied theatre practices, climate activism and local expertise to work with young people in Otley and explore how their experiences can inform new ways of tackling the local impacts of climate change.

“Given the complex and multifaceted nature of climate change as one of the major contemporary challenges for young people, an interdisciplinary partnership was a necessity to ensure that an array of approaches and knowledges are accessed in order to effectively identify positive modes of action.

“In addition to this, Otley’s cultural landscape means young people have limited access to arts provision, we are hoping this project will also provide an opportunity to investigate the possibilities of a sustainable youth arts practice in Otley.”

Co-producing ‘school living labs’ to reduce community carbon emissions

Dr Vasiliki Kiopu, Jane Dickinson, Dr Rebecca Brunk, Adam Ranson

The Department for Education requires the education sector to play a role in positively responding to climate change, but schools often lack resources, expertise, and support to successfully implement sustainability into their curriculums and local communities.

Partnering with Leeds Development Education Centre (DEC), the research team aims to respond to this challenge by creating resources around reducing carbon, and an implementation model for schools to incorporate sustainability into their curriculum.

The research team says: “We are excited to receive this Horizons Connect Fund that will enable the collaboration between University of Leeds academics, Leeds Development Education Centre and primary schools in under-served neighbourhoods in our community to pursue a living lab that will enable positive change towards sustainability and encourage climate action.”

Working through a living lab methodology, the project team are hoping their approach empowers communities to address complex problems by co-creating the research questions, through the ways data is collected, and in the ways solutions are developed with participants.

Establishing a Sustainable Cooling Pune Network

Dr Sumedha Basu, Dr Catherine Bale, Dr Namrata Dhamankar

Working with Maharshi Karve Stree Shikshan Samstha (MKSSS), a non-governmental organisation dedicated towards the empowerment of women through education in Pune, India, the project team will explore the formation of a Sustainable Cooling Network in the city.

Dr Namrata Dhamankar says: “Through the Horizon Connect Fund we aim to collaborate and build a network for all stakeholders working on sustainable cooling for onground support of policy and project implementation.

“This interdisciplinary partnership between two institutes will foster long-term collaboration on sustainable development and allied areas of work in the Built Environment.”

Sustainable cooling is one of the most critical areas of policy intervention for Indian cities today, bringing together solutions to climate mitigation and adaptation, and health and wellbeing of citizens. In addition to threats of increasing intensity of heatwaves, India suffers from poor access to cooling technologies.

Pune has very context-specific cooling needs due to its unique geography and evolving urban sprawl.

While the city centre maintains a cooler temperature, benefitting from the old stone houses and urban green cover, the newly built areas in the outskirts of the city suffer for high temperatures.

Dr Catherine (Frin) Bale says: “Following significant interest from a range of organisations in Pune we are pleased to take forward this network as a means to drive forward sustainable cooling in Pune, and realise the associated climate, health and wellbeing benefits.”

The Right to Grow in Hull: Improving access to land for food production within communities

Dr Rebecca St Clair, Claire Gribben, Anna Route, Professor Sara Gonzáles, Dr Effie Papargyropoulou

Hull Food Partnership is a partnership of businesses, organisations and community members from in and around Hull. The partnership works towards realising ‘a vision of sustainable food for all’ and represents the City of Hull as a member of the nationwide Sustainable Food Places Network.

The research team will work with Hull Food Partnership to support the development of, and engagement with, the ‘Right to Grow’ in Hull — helping those living in the city access the multiple benefits of food growing, including improved mental and physical wellbeing, community cohesion, and horticultural skills/knowledge.

The research team said: “We’re delighted to have the opportunity to work in this fantastic interdisciplinary team, where we’ll be exploring the Right to Grow initiative in Hull.

“This new policy development means that residents of Hull will find it easier to access publicly owned land in order to grow their own food.

“We’re really looking forward to sharing and building on expertise between the Hull Food Partnership and the University of Leeds to investigate ways in which this policy can be supported in practice. We also want to explore how other local and regional authorities can learn from experiences in Hull. We hope that this research will pave the way for future collaboration.”

The Right to Grow ensures that available public land is listed, and that councils provide infrastructure for residents to grow food. Hull Food Partnership has worked with Hull City Council to make the Right to Grow a reality for the people of Hull, and the Council unanimously adopted a motion to give local communities the Right To Grow food on publicly owned land. Hull City Council is the first local authority to do this.

If you would like to find out more about any of these projects, please contact the Horizons Institute team via horizons@leeds.ac.uk