‘SEiSMiC’: Societal Engagement in Science, Mutual learning in Cities
Report on the Workshop in Birmingham
Monday 16 June 2014, 1-4pm
ThinkTank, Millennium Point, Birmingham, B4 7XG
The Birmingham workshop was held at Millennium Point, which houses the ThinkTank science museum, the Giant Screen cinema, faculties of Birmingham City University and the fashion and design studios of Birmingham Metropolitan College. Millennium Point also benefits from the City’s first central park – Eastside City Park – at its south entrance on Curzon Street.
Invitations had been sent to people and organisations with involved in researching and/or addressing urban challenges through social innovation and sustainable development.
The following individuals participated in the workshop:
· Denise Barrett, Regeneration Manager, Birmingham City Council
· Geoffrey Brown, Director, EUCLID
· John Daly, Doctoral Researcher, Birmingham City Business School
· Tim Manson, Policy & Development Director, Marketing Birmingham
· James Rees, Research Fellow, Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham
· Olinga Ta’eed, Centre for Citizenship, Enterprise and Governance, Professor of Social Enterprise, University Northampton Business School
· Dave Taylor, Birmingham City University
· Laura Veart, Deputy EU Funding Manager, Birmingham City University
· Mike Coyne SEiSMiC team (Centre for Strategy & Evaluation Services)
· Jack Malan, SEiSMiC team (Centre for Strategy & Evaluation Services)
· James Rampton, SEiSMiC team (Centre for Strategy & Evaluation Services)
Setting the Scene
An initial presentation from CSES set out the main features of the SEiSMiC project and the aims of the workshop. These were defined as follows:
The overall intention of the Workshop is to help define the aims and programme of a social innovation network - in the UK and across Europe - that has a particular focus on responses to urban or location-based challenges. This would include responses based on an interaction with national and EU funded research.
The origins of the project in the Science-in-Society theme of the EU’s FP7 Framework Programme for RTD were explained, as were the implications of the thinking on the interaction of science and society in the current Horizon 2020 Programme, notably for exploring ways to engage society in actively generating innovation. The link of SEiSMiC with JPI Urban Europe was referred to and the significance in this context of the interest of the ESRC and other UK research councils in community engagement with social innovation in addressing urban challenges.
More specifically, the following objectives were set for the workshop:
· Explore the meaning of social innovation in the urban context of Birmingham
· Articulate visions for a sustainable future for cities across Europe
· Review the role of existing key actors and promote and reinforce their interaction
· Identify other potential contributors and ways of engaging communities in social innovation
· Explore relationships with formal research support (e.g. Horizon 2020 & JPI Urban Europe)
· Plan the next steps at a national and European level
Current activities
The participants outlined the role of their organisations in social innovation in the urban context of Birmingham:
· Birmingham City Council: as one of the largest local authorities in Europe, the City Council plays a key role in urban planning, design and delivery of public services, public procurement, etc. In recent years, pressure on budgets has driven the search for innovative solutions to urban challenges and innovative ways to reform public services.
· Birmingham City University (BCU): with 22,000 students, BCU is a major employer, provider of graduate labour and stakeholder in the city. Recent investments have been stimulated by and contributed to the wider regeneration of the city, most notably, the city centre campus at Eastside. Within the Faculty of Technology, Engineering and the Environment, four schools specifically focus on teaching and research related to digital media technology, the built environment, engineering, design and manufacturing, and computing telecommunications and networks.
· Centre for Citizenship, Enterprise and Governance[1] houses the external face of University of Northampton Business School Research & Enterprise agenda. The Centre operates a number of activities, including a Business Enterprise Support Team to support enterprise activity across the Business School and in the region and to explore and set up profitable (social) enterprises. Prof Ta’eed is actively working with Birmingham City Council in the largest social capital project in the world.
· EUCLID[2]: EUCLID provides international information services on behalf of the Arts Council England. EUCLID has developed Culture.Info, an extensive series of online portals providing cultural information from across the world – covering cultural areas, geographical locations and themes such as funding, research and the creative industries. Other information services include the Alert e-newsletter on EU funding and the CUPID database of EU funded culture projects.
· Marketing Birmingham[3] is the city’s strategic marketing partnership, which operates the city’s leisure and business tourism programmes, Visit and Meet Birmingham, as well as inward investment programme Business Birmingham. Specialist teams cover communications, marketing, digital media, research, partnerships, policy and visitor services. Marketing Birmingham operates the Regional Observatory, which provides high quality research data and intelligence on inward investment and the visitor economy to inform strategic planning, policy development and marketing and PR campaigns.
· Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC).[4] TSRC is based at the University of Birmingham, with contributions from the Universities of Southampton and Lincoln. The Centre aims to enhance knowledge of the sector through independent and critical research, giving a better understanding of the value of the sector and how this can be maximised. Research addresses seven main streams: Quantitative Analysis, Real Times, Service Delivery, Below the Radar, Theory and Policy, Social Enterprise, and Workforce.
Defining the Priorities among Urban Challenges
The workshop discussed the major urban challenges or location-based challenges faced, not only in Birmingham but generally, and the potential themes for a UK SEiSMiC network. This developed into a discussion of the potential for social innovation to respond to such challenges. This would include responses based on an interaction with national and EU funded research. With that in mind, a number of issues were discussed.
Legislation as a driver of social innovation
The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012[5] aims to transform the way money is spent on local public services. It does this by placing a duty on public bodies to consider social value ahead of procurement. The Act applies to the provision of services, or the provision of services together with the purchase or hire of goods or the carrying out of works. Commissioners of public services must think about more than just how to design these services and who will provide them. Public authorities must also consider how the new services could have an even further reaching impact on the local community. For example, in the West Midlands, all major councils have nominated social value champions. 3,000 businesses signed up to Trading For Good, a platform that helps SMEs showcase their social impact.[6] In the long-term, it is hoped that companies contracted to deliver public services will be prepared to make a long-term investment in the economic health of communities. For example, Wilmot Dixon has invested £1 million in a skills academy to train 2,000 people a year in support of its contract with Birmingham City Council for long-term repairs and maintenance of 60,000 properties for the council. However, there is debate as to whether measures such as the Social Value Act will prove counter-productive through creating more “red tape” for businesses and thus hindering the job creation.
In India, the Companies Act 2013[7] requires that companies set up a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) board committee consisting of at least three directors, one of whom must be independent. That committee must ensure that the company spends at least 2% of the average net profits made during the three immediately preceding financial years on “CSR” activities. If the company fails to spend this amount on CSR, the board must disclose why in its annual report.
Public procurement as a driver of social innovation
Pressures on public budgets, as well as the Social Value Act are pushing public authorities to consider how the procurement process can maximise the social impact of public expenditure. Changes in European procurement legislation (Directive 2014/24/EU replacing Directive 2004/18/EC and Directive 2014/25/EU replacing Directive 2004/17/EC) will have a similar effect, after they come into force after March 2016.
Current initiatives in this area include the following:
· Find it in Birmingham,[8] an internet portal for local businesses, providing access to procurement information, local contacts, suppliers and businesses, as well as networking events and information about public services for employers (Employment Access Team, ACAS, etc.)
· Centre for Social Business, an initiative supported by the city’s universities, with three sites in the city (Balsall Heath, Shard End, Castle Vale).
· Proposed new procurement model for Birmingham City Council, which will include a “Market Exchange” and also ensure the Council’s compliance with the Social Value Act. For contracts worth in excess of £150,000, the expectation is that social value of at least 20% should be generated.
· Birmingham Business Charter for Social Responsibility[9] sets out guiding principles to which the City Council adheres and which it invites its contracted suppliers, the wider business community, other public sector bodies (including schools) and third sector organisations (including grant recipients) to adopt. The principles of the charter are: Local Employment, Buy Birmingham First, Partners in Communities, Good Employer, Green and Sustainable, Ethical Procurement. Charter signatories need to consider and describe how they can improve economic, social and environmental well-being.
As with legislation, there is debate as to the extent to which new approaches to public procurement is an effective way to address social challenges. In particular, there is the question as to whether businesses can be expected to take responsibility for addressing gaps and deficiencies in the provision of skills for local people and the extent to which they can be required or cajoled into employing local people (who might lack the necessary skills) rather than other people who are more “job-ready”.
In relation to the issues that are key for SEiSMiC, the mechanisms described for delivering social value could well represent a response to the question of how to deliver solutions to urban challenges, but there are important aspects that the project could assist with, notably the issue of the role of the community – as a passive recipient of the corporate sector’s good works, as a vehicle for defining priorities or as an active agent in developing solutions. Similarly, there is an issue of whether or not social value initiatives can deliver a comprehensive set of solutions or will there be too much of a focus on addressing particular issues?
Restructuring and reforming public services
Pressure on public expenditure budgets is also stimulating new models of delivering public services. A key problem relates to the delivery of different public services in “silos”, with limited horizontal integration or co-ordination of services into the same locality. A related challenge relates to the setting of different key performance indicators (KPIs) for different public bodies or providers of public services. Such KPIs can often be contradictory, for example, KPIs that encourage schools to retain young people in education until 18 years risk undermining efforts to increase the number of young people undertaking apprenticeships and other training in the workplace.
As already discussed, new approaches to public procurement are stimulating social innovation and new ways of delivering public services. There are also examples of initiatives to provide better co-ordination of public services at ground level and better use of community assets.
· Due to public expenditure cuts, the Ladywood Health & Community Centre is at risk of closure. Located in a deprived neighbourhood close to the city centre, the centre is being used to bring together the services of different public bodies under one roof, for example, services of Birmingham City Council, as well as those of the local NHS trust and to encourage users to take more control. The Centre has been chosen as an area for generating creative spillovers in innovation under an Urbact project on sustainable urban development. The intention is not only to provide more services for local people, but to consider the holistic needs of individuals and families rather than by viewing them as “beneficiaries” of specific services. It is also hoped that such an approach will also ensure the long-term viability of the centre itself. The centre features a valuable input from Birmingham Royal Ballet and operates within the Creative SpIN project (described below), as an example of how the creative sectors can trigger collaborative work and innovation in health provision and improve the health and wellbeing outcomes in a deprived area.
There is also a need for efforts to combine not only mainstream public services but also to co-ordinate different innovations and initiatives aimed at addressing urban challenges. Where these can be targeted on an area in a co-ordinated way, the impact can be greater.
· Lessons can be learned from elsewhere. The Brussels Canal Zone, for instance, features high unemployment among youth, a major influx of newcomers, and a lack of urban cohesion due to declining industry. As the rest of the city develops, new opportunities are arising to develop parts of the zone. Since the territory of the Canal Zone is located in seven different municipalities, however, it is difficult to arrive at an integrated approach. The present resources allocated to spatial planning appear inadequate to working at such a large scale. Thus there is a need for a new overarching vision capable of guiding present developments. The Brussels-Capital Region is addressing this challenge by formulating the Canal Master Plan, a coherent urban plan for the entire Canal Zone. The emphasis of this plan lies not on defining a single desirable end state for the future of the Canal Zone. Rather, a process is being sought with new methods, studies, and scenarios in which a new strategy can be developed together.[10]
Inward investment as a driver of social innovation
The arrival of inward investors into a locality creates opportunities and challenges:
· Inward investors can use new sites to test new models of production and/or service delivery. For example, Deutsche Bank, the German global banking and financial services provider, is creating a new model for the delivery of back office functions at its new site in Birmingham. The new site will house the firm’s trading floor, as well as sales, trading, structuring and research operations. It is expected that the location of these services in a single site will improve the company’s efficiency, e.g. by reducing the time taken to make decisions.