Since the Labour Party came to power last year with a promise to boost English devolution, there has been a lot of talk about what role universities could and should play in regional innovation.

Part of the answer came ahead of June¡¯s spending review, when a ?500 million Local Innovation Partnerships Fund was announced, with the funding to seven established mayoral strategic authorities and the three devolved nations of the UK. The devolved administrations will work with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and local businesses and research organisations to invest in priority areas of local growth plans.

But localism in research funding should not just be about technological advances. It is just as relevant in the arts, humanities and social sciences. And as well as potentially seeing funding targeted more effectively, it can also distribute it more fairly. Centralised allocation has meant that, for too long, decisions about who gets to take part in R&D and where R&D can happen are taken a long way away from the places and people closest to innovation opportunity.

But how exactly should devolved funding calls work? The AHRC Creative Communities programme, a ?3.9 million investment funded by the (AHRC), offers an example that others can and should follow.

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The programme aims to explore how co-created culture can enhance belonging, address regional inequality, deliver devolution and break down barriers to opportunity in devolved regions. It is based at Northumbria University, which is at the heart of one of the most mature of England¡¯s devolved regions, the North-east. The programme team works from this devolved context to design inclusive funding opportunities that bring innovation and research opportunity closer to people and places, helping to?gather cross-sector match funding and sharing the skills and benefits arising from innovation across the whole of the UK.

This devolution of research funding itself was recommended by the 2023?, which mapped more than a decade of funding for culture, communities and collaborative R&D to see where money had gone, why and to what effect. It also suggested that funding should be provided at 100 per cent of full economic cost (rather than the usual 80 per cent) to engage cross-sector partners and communities as researchers, rather than just as the subjects of research: a strategic aim of the AHRC. Community partners are not able to cross-subsidise research from other revenue streams, as universities can.

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In direct response to the report, AHRC invested in the new . These embed researchers directly within devolved communities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as mayoral areas of England. The awards announced this week will explore how culture in a context of devolution can deliver growth by enhancing belonging, addressing regional inequality and breaking down barriers to opportunity in specifically devolved contexts.

The CIP Awards have been designed with rapid intervention in mind. Gone are the lengthy application forms and requirements for extensive letters of commitment from partners. Instead, a short, 1,000-word expression of interest stage triages candidates into application advice surgeries with the Creative Communities programme team to support and develop the applicants¡¯ ideas and help them work together through early feedback.

Applicants then can submit either a 1,000-word written application or an eight-minute video application. The video application is a new intervention for AHRC: it is important for these awards because it includes everyone involved in a collaborative bid.

Applications are shared for assessment with a panel of cross-sector experts from across the UK to ensure parity of place-based knowledge and representation. The applicant surgeries create early feedback and support, but also expectation management, limiting the number of bids that go on to make full applications. Partners are meaningfully brought together to co-create an application in practice, not just on paper. It is a model from which all funding bodies can learn ¨C and, indeed, are learning.

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The CIP Awards are also innovative in their outputs. No more expensive, locked-behind-a-paywall journal articles or difficult-to-obtain monographs. Instead, the CIPs will each produce an open-access , for their devolved government or mayoral authority and an episode of the . This suite of open-access outputs is intended to share learning broadly and place the participants¡¯ voices front and centre of the co-created research.

With UK focused on addressing regional inequality and economic growth, place-based innovation can supercharge new networks and collaborations. The CIP Awards lever the best learning from devolution and take it back to Westminster to ensure that cultural research and devolved policymaking is the product of the many, not the few.

Early indicators from are promising. Projects have influenced everything from devolved government manifestos to Unesco heritage policies and NHS approaches to community health. But scaling this impact requires wider systemic change to help communities and cross-sector partners find a seat at the research table.

What we need now is for more funding councils to recognise and embrace this approach ¨C not just to unlock regional economic innovation but to rebalance funding opportunities. In an era of declining trust in institutions and growing demands for research relevance, this approach offers a path toward more democratic, more impactful, and more valuable knowledge creation that is truly by all, and for all.

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is director of AHRC Creative Communities and university director of cultural partnerships at Northumbria University. ?is senior research fellow for AHRC Creative Communities at Northumbria University.