The aim of the South West Coastal Local Policy Innovation Partnership (SWC LPIP) is to bring cross-sector and cross-boundary partners together to co-design solutions to address the complex and interlinked problems facing coastal communities. There is growing awareness of coastal disadvantage. Evidence presented in the 2021 Chief Medical Officer's annual report shows that coastal areas have some of the worst health outcomes in England. The 2022 Levelling up White Paper similarly notes that seaside towns have among the highest levels of community need and poor opportunities for the people who grow up there. While policy attention is starting to be directed towards the needs of coastal communities, there several barriers to developing effective (and cost-effective) policy solutions. We know, for example, that the decline of traditional industries and strong reliance on hospitality is related to low incomes and seasonal jobs. Economic opportunities are likely to impact on detrimental patterns of in- and out-migration which, in turn, affect educational capital and the skills base. These, in turn may explain the fact that higher productivity sectors such as the digital, creative and blue economies have not emerged in many coastal areas, reinforcing the low wage economy. The lack of such opportunities will also impact on migration patterns, as will unaffordable housing and poor transport links. In other words, all these factors are highly interconnected. This (a) raises questions about the most appropriate 'entry points' for intervention and (b) requires a diverse range of stakeholders - from the public, business and voluntary and community sectors as well as citizens themselves - to work together in understanding problems and co-designing (rather than duplicating) policy solutions. A key focus of the LPIP is to ensure that partners who are spending scarce resources on improving the lives of coastal citizens are making the best use of those resources. Embedding research and evaluation is a key part of effective policy design which should draw on existing evidence of good practice or, as is usually the case with respect to coastal disadvantage, address knowledge gaps where evidence does not exist. Part of this requires a better (and more joined-up) use of existing data, promoting a shift from 'business' to 'strategic' intelligence. It also demands meaningful engagement with citizens to ensure that those responsible for designing and implementing projects are asking the ask the right questions and identifying the right solutions. Any innovations that are designed and implemented should be piloted and evaluated, with a willingness to learn what works - but also what doesn't work, with findings shared with other communities facing coastal challenges. The aim of Phase One of this project is to support the establishment of partnerships of people and organisations in Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset with the aim of building a consensus around what the key economic, community and environmental problems are in this region and how best solutions can be developed. As well as facilitating practice-policy exchange and the design and delivery of new ways of working, the South-West Coastal LPIP will establish an evidence repository so that new coastal datasets (linked and at a greater level of granularity) and evidence of good practice can be shared across the region and to coastal areas beyond.

The creative industries are crucial to UK social and cultural life and one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the economy. Games and media are key pillars for growth in the creative industries, with UK turnovers of £3.5bn and £12.9bn respectively. Research in digital creativity has started to be well supported by governmental funds. To achieve full impact from these investments, translational and audience-facing research activities are needed to turn ideas into commercial practice and societal good. We propose a "Digital Creativity" Hub for such next-step research, which will produce impact from a huge amount of research activity in direct collaboration with a large group of highly engaged stakeholders, delivering impact in the Digital Economy challenge areas of Sustainable Society, Communities and Culture and New Economic Models. York is the perfect location for the DC Hub, with a fast-growing Digital Creativity industry (which grew 18.4% from 2011 to 2012), and 4800 creative digital companies within a 40-mile radius of the city. The DC Hub will be housed in the Ron Cooke Hub, alongside the IGGI centre for doctoral training, world-class researchers, and numerous small hi-tech companies. The DC Hub brings: - A wealth of research outcomes from Digital Economy projects funded by £90m of grants, £40m of which was managed directly by the investigators named in the proposal. The majority of these projects are interdisciplinary collaborations which involved co-creation of research questions and approaches with creative industry partners, and all of them produced results which are ripe for translational impact. - Substantial cash and in-kind support amounting to pledges of £9m from 80 partner organisations. These include key organisations in the Digital Economy, such as the KTN, Creative England and the BBC, major companies such as BT, Sony and IBM, and a large number of SMEs working in games and interactive media. The host Universities have also pledged £3.3m in matched funding, with the University of York agreeing to hire four "transitional" research fellows on permanent contracts from the outset leading to academic positions as a Professor, a Reader and two Lecturers. - Strong overlap with current projects run by the investigators which have complementary goals. These include the NEMOG project to study new economic models and opportunities for games, the Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) centre for doctoral training, with 55+ PhDs, and the Falmouth ERA Chair project, which will contribute an extra 5 five-year research fellowships to the DC Hub, leveraging £2m of EC funding for translational research in digital games technologies. - A diverse and highly active base of 16 investigators and 4 named PDRAs across four universities, who have much experience of working together on funded research projects delivering high-impact results. The links between these investigators are many and varied, and interdisciplinarity is ensured by a group of investigators working across Computer Science, Theatre Film and TV, Electronics, Art, Audio Production, Sociology, Education, Psychology, and Business. - Huge potential for step-change impact in the creative industries, with particular emphasis on video game technologies, interactive media, and the convergence of games and media for science and society. Projects in these areas will be supported by and feed into basic research in underpinning themes of data analytics, business models, human-computer interaction and social science. The projects will range over impact themes comprising impact projects which will be specified throughout the life of the Hub in close collaboration with our industry partners, who will help shape the research, thus increasing the potential for major impact. - A management team, with substantial experience of working together on large projects for research and impact in collaboration with the digital creative industries.