The Centre for Digital Citizens (CDC) will address emerging challenges of digital citizenship, taking an inclusive, participatory approach to the design and evaluation of new technologies and services that support 'smart', 'data-rich' living in urban, rural and coastal communities. Core to the Centre's work will be the incubation of sustainable 'Digital Social Innovations' (DSI) that will ensure digital technologies support diverse end-user communities and will have long-lasting social value and impact beyond the life of the Centre. Our technological innovations will be co-created between academic, industrial, public and third sector partners, with citizens supporting co-creation and delivery of research. Through these activities, CDC will incubate user-led social innovation and sustainable impact for the Digital Economy (DE), at scale, in ways that have previously been difficult to achieve. The CDC will build on a substantial joint legacy and critical mass of DE funded research between Newcastle and Northumbria universities, developing the trajectory of work demonstrated in our highly successful Social Inclusion for the Digital Economy (SIDE) hub, our Digital Civics Centre for Doctoral Training and our Digital Economy Research Centre (DERC). The CDC is a response to recent research that has challenged simplified notions of the smart urban environment and its inhabitants, and highlighted the risks of emerging algorithmic and automated futures. The Centre will leverage our pioneering participatory design and co-creative research, our expertise in digital participatory platforms and data-driven technologies, to deliver new kinds of innovation for the DE, that empowers citizens. The CDC will focus on four critical Citizen Challenge areas arising from our prior work: 'The Well Citizen' addresses how use of shared personal data, and publicly available large-scale data, can inform citizens' self-awareness of personal health and wellbeing, of health inequalities, and of broader environmental and community wellbeing; 'The Safe Citizen' critically examines online and offline safety, including issues around algorithmic social justice and the role of new data technologies in supporting fair, secure and equitable societies; 'The Connected Citizen' explores next-generation citizen-led digital public services, which can support and sustain civic engagement and action in communities, and engagement in wider socio-political issues through new sustainable (openly managed) digital platforms; and 'The Ageless Citizen' investigates opportunities for technology-enhanced lifelong learning and opportunities for intergenerational engagement and technologies to support growth across an entire lifecourse. CDC pilot projects will be spread across the urban, rural and costal geography of the North East of England, embedded in communities with diverse socio-economic profiles and needs. Driving our programme to address these challenges is our 'Engaged Citizen Commissioning Framework'. This framework will support citizens' active engagement in the co-creation of research and critical inquiry. The framework will use design-led 'initiation mechanisms' (e.g. participatory design workshops, hackathons, community events, citizen labs, open innovation and co-production platform experiments) to support the co-creation of research activities. Our 'Innovation Fellows' (postdoctoral researchers) will engage in a 24-month social innovation programme within the CDC. They will pilot DSI projects as part of highly interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder teams, including academics and end-users (e.g. Community Groups, NGO's, Charities, Government, and Industry partners). The outcome of these pilots will be the development of further collaborative bids (Research Council / Innovate UK / Charity / Industry funded), venture capital pitches, spin-outs and/or social enterprises. In this way the Centre will act as a catalyst for future innovation-focused DE activity.

The health and wellbeing benefits of nature-based activity programmes offered to young people are commonly accepted. However researchers do not fully understand what works and how, so nature-based programmes need to be evaluated. Our research project is based in Middlesbrough and will use arts-based and traditional research methods to understand: i) which features of a nature-based programme are most valued by young people (aged 13-24 years) and nature-based workers; ii) what is needed to effectively manage a nature-based programme so that it can be adapted to other places; and iii) how such programmes can be strengthened in the future. Our project has three connected stages that will be conducted over 12 months. We will invite people involved in nature-based programmes, including young people and nature-based practitioners, to join our advisory group so they can help co-design and guide our research. We will offer research skills training to our young advisors so that they are supported to be involved in all aspects of the project. Stage 1: In a series of consultations, we asked young people involved in nature-based activities provided by our community partners how they would like to take part in a research project. They told us they would like to use photography as a way to engage in the research. We will therefore use an arts-based method called photo-elicitation to understand the features of a nature-based programme that are most valued by young people, and how this might relate to health. We will also invite the practitioners providing nature-based activities to take part in a walking interview so they can show us the activities they run and tell us in their own words what is important to them, and why. Stage 2: We also want to improve understanding about the ingredients of a successful nature-based programme. To do this, we will invite the people who are responsible for providing nature-based programmes across the North East and North Cumbria to complete an online survey. In the survey they can describe how their existing nature-based programmes work, and what obstacles they face. The findings will help us identify ways to improve what already exists. Stage 3: Our researcher will be based within the Middlesbrough community to help us understand what matters to the people who live and work there, and to help them understand how our research works, so that we can help each other. We will invite the people involved nature-based programmes to two meetings where we will agree on the best ways to work together, and to create a plan on how we will take action to overcome any challenges faced in keeping nature-based activities running successfully. We will share findings with the public and organisations involved in nature-based activities for health to start a conversation about how such programmes can be optimised and expanded across the region and the country. We will also use the findings as a foundation for a larger project to test the improvements identified to existing nature-based programmes in different places, and to encourage others to consider similar approaches in their region.