Our vision is a transformation of food systems (FS) across the UK towards being 'regenerative'. Our current FS are responsible for major social and environmental impacts, such as poor diets, ill health and major environmental degradation and threaten the long-term wellbeing of people and the planet. Because many aspects of ecological and human health have already passed critical thresholds, new regenerative approaches are needed that go beyond just reducing harm to sustainable levels and instead develop FS that have dynamics that 'spiral up' social, economic and environmental benefit, and for all. This research therefore aims to answer two main questions: (1) What do regenerative systems look like? and (2) How can transformations be enabled so we can get to regenerative FS? To answer these questions we will work with diverse stakeholders to change the Yorkshire food system and use the learning to inform change efforts in other parts of the UK and beyond. Our work will focus on shifting trajectories towards regenerative dynamics in three inter-related systems of: healthy eating for young children, hybrid food economies and farming. This will enable us to consider not just the food chain (farming to fork) but also its outcomes, such as food security (availability, access and utilisation of food), quality, safety and social welfare, as well as how these aspects interact with social, economic and environmental drivers. We will use novel approaches that combine different processes of data collection and 'learning by doing' from applying different interventions, while also creatively developing solutions and new ways of thinking about FS. The work will also use innovative thinking that will enable us to keep focus on stimulating transformational kinds of change. This will be delivered using a 'co-creation' approach, with researchers and other professionals working together to bring about change. Our research has already been developed with a range of FS stakeholders from farming, industry, civil society and national and regional government. This process has resulted in a new anchor institutions platform and a 'Leaders for Change' group of young people, both of which will help use drive system change. Our work will have six main outcomes for Yorkshire and beyond: (1) New visions of regenerative FS; (2) Scalable innovative interventions (e.g. new models of food procurement and environmentally sustainable menus for schools and early years settings; educational resources/activities linking healthy diet and climate change such as remote/interactive farming platform for schools; hybrid business models like food hubs, community urban vertical farms; a UK wide model to predict impacts of scaling regenerative farming, linking of regenerative farming produce to schools and anchor institutions procurement); (3) New policies and governance mechanisms (such as the Food Systems Council for Yorkshire) to ensure impact well beyond the programme; (4) New metrics and platform to help guide and drive transformation (e.g. new data for National Food School monitoring; and an open-source codebase with quantitative systems models to co-create a new metrics dashboard for FS transformation); (5) New narratives for different stakeholders to support cultural change; and (6) Bring together different stakeholders, information and new ways of thinking to ensure long-term transformational intent. Overall, our cutting edge science that uses co-creation and action oriented methods will actively shift trajectories towards new kinds of regenerative FS in Yorkshire. It will also produce cutting-edge science about how to achieve transformation of FS towards the new concepts of regenerative futures. Through the influential researchers and partners involved, this learning will also be actively fed into UK policy and international endeavours, ensuring the programme has wide-reaching and long-lasting impact.

This proposal will examine how beef cattle and sheep farmers in upland areas of Northern England and Scotland can improve their resilience to environmental, economic, and social change, and what impact their actions to improve resilience will have on food supplies, natural resources and society. Uplands make up 70% of Scotland, 60% of Wales, 40% of Northern Ireland and 15% of England. Hence over the UK as a whole uplands are a substantial element of the agricultural land resource. The upland regions of Scotland and Northern England have been historically dominated by grazing beef cattle and sheep. Beef cattle and sheep are important to local livelihoods as well as the national food supply and economy. Scotland, for example, has around 2.6 million ewes, 12,700 agricultural holdings, providing the economy with an annual return of £189 million. The UK is a world player when it comes to producing sheep meat. It is the sixth biggest producer globally and exports 36% of output to more than 100 countries. In addition, the UK uplands as a whole - including agricultural land - have a substantial role to play in addressing many wider environmental issues (e.g. flood prevention; biodiversity enhancement; carbon sequestration in upland moorlands, peatlands and forests). Reduced numbers of animals grazing can have positive impacts on biodiversity, but there are equally concerns that reduced grazing can have negative impacts on open habitats in upland landscapes. Farming and other land uses in the uplands is extremely challenging, currently financially unviable, and needing to respond to the challenges such as climate change, livestock diseases and changing demands from society. In this project we will study four upland case study areas in-depth, and work with the people living there, and with organisations working in those areas to understand better what are the critical factors that influence beef cattle and sheep farmers' resilience to change, and what impact changes in beef cattle and sheep farming can have on food supplies locally and globally, the upland environment, local employment opportunities, and local cultures. These four case study areas are Orkney, Lewis and the Isle of Skye, Scottish borders and Yorkshire Dales. The aim of this project is to provide better tools for decision making for policy makers, local authorities and enterprise agencies, non-governmental organisations, food processors and retailers, farmers and farming groups and local people. By understanding better the interactions among different aspects of the food system, we will be able to appreciate who become vulnerable and how, and what actions will make these vulnerabilities better or worse.

UK national productivity challenges can be analysed from many different perspectives, including firm-specific, industry-specific, organisational-specific, institution-specific or technology-specific perspectives. In the case of the UK, however, the extent to which productivity problems are regional in nature is almost unparalleled amongst the advanced OECD economies. London and the core regions of southern England exhibit very strong productivity performance by OECD and EU standards whereas the non-core regions of the UK consistently exhibit weak productivity performance by OECD and EU standards. These non-core regions consistently display a very long tail of poor productivity firms, operating alongside numerous high productivity firms in London and its hinterland. When compared to OECD and EU averages the non-core tail of poor performing firms hampers national productivity performance by largely cancelling out the stronger performance of the firms in the more prosperous core regions. The result is that UK productivity has barely changed relative to our international competitors in more than four decades. Yet, these longstanding and growing interregional differences in productivity performance are the very aspect of the UK's productivity performance about which we probably know the least. Therefore, in order to better understand the UK's productivity challenges, we employ a place-based lens to investigate the extent to which many UK productivity-enhancing and productivity-inhibiting processes are related to geography. The proposed Productivity Insights Network incorporates these analytical perspectives in a manner that explicitly uncovers the local, city and regional dimensions of productivity performance. This is achieved by developing an innovative multi-disciplinary network though with the thematic productivity challenges aim to unpack the complex interactions between factors of production across different institutional and geographical settings. The network is structured around seven thematic productivity challenges which are addressed and integrated by interdisciplinary teams of experts examining five sets of interaction mechanisms, all operating in a geographical setting. The thematic productivity challenges addressed are: a) Skills, education and training b) Employment, work and labour markets; c) FDI, capital and investment markets; d) Health, well-being, ageing and demographic change; e) Technology, innovation, competitiveness, and enterprise; f) Organisation, institutions and governance; and, g) Land use, transport and infrastructure. The five different interaction mechanisms we examine are: 1) knowledge spillovers and interactions; 2) financial interactions; 3) organisational interactions; 4) social interactions; and; 5) governance interactions. These different lines of enquiry are knitted together via four work packages (WPs), namely: WP1. Network Management; WP2. Thematic Productivity Challenges; WP3. Integrated Analysis; and, WP4 Engagement, Dissemination & Learning Activities. This Sheffield-led Productivity Insights Network proposal will co-produce new social science insights with a range of partners from the public, private and third sectors, with a view furthering our understanding of the UK productivity puzzle and develop actionable outcomes. Beyond generating new perspectives the Productivity Insights Network will also identify policy options best suited to responding to the UK's productivity challenges. This proposal has been developed in consultation with over 50 academics well as with other non-academic partners and networks, and if funded the NW+ will pursue a portfolio of new interdisciplinary activity. The multi-disciplinary Productivity Insights Network will see early career researchers and established scholars working together in order to develop and disseminate new insights through the network to government, businesses and other stakeholder organisations.

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.