Creative Councils

Our Work

Creative Councils announced

We've selected seventeen councils to go through to the next stage of our Creative Councils programme.

Over the next few months, these councils will receive practical support to challenge and develop their idea.

There will also be opportunities for more of the applicant councils to get involved in some of the programme activities, and lessons and practical tools will be shared with all councils across England and Wales throughout the lifetime of the programme.

The chosen councils are:

Read all the ideas

Take a look at all of the ideas in more detail

About Creative Councils

Creative Councils is a new programme from NESTA, working with the Local Government Group, to support local authorities to develop and implement radical innovations that meet the challenges of tomorrow.

Our ambition over the next two years is to work with a small group of pioneering local authorities across England and Wales and their partners to develop, implement and spread transformational new approaches to meeting some of the biggest medium and long-term challenges facing communities and local services.

A map of all the councils which applied

Get the data

View, take and share the data from our Creative Councils applicants

The response

Over one-third (38%) of all local authorities in England and Wales applied for the programme, amounting to 137 submissions.

The response revealed a significant appetite for innovation amongst councils and a widespread desire to develop and test radical new approaches.

Applications covered a wide spectrum of the challenges facing local services and communities, including supporting an ageing population, the rapidly increasing demands on social services, helping people into work and achieving sustainable growth.

Councils put forward radical ideas including new configurations of public, civic and private resources, and in many cases completely re-imagining the role of local government.

We have published a short analysis of the applications, as well as some of the data used in this analysis. This is intended to be useful tool to understand the innovation landscape across the country and is the first step in us sharing information and insights generated by the programme.

Next stage

We anticipate that five of the most promising ideas from our longlist of seventeen will be selected to receive significant financial and non-financial support to put their ideas into practice. This will include supporting their spread to other areas.

There will be also be opportunities for all of the applicant councils to get involved in some of the programme activities, and lessons and practical tools will be shared with councils across England and Wales throughout the lifetime of the programme.

Open process, open data

Our aim is that Creative Councils will not only benefit those areas that we work with directly but will be a source of inspiration and knowledge for more councils and for local government as a whole.

It is in this spirit that we are choosing to publish information about all of the applications online, to create an opportunity for people to challenge and develop the ideas and creating the opportunity for new collaborations to emerge.

Simpl solution

We have also put the 137 councils' own summaries on Simpl - a social innovation marketplace that connects people with good ideas for radical social change to people with resources who want to do things differently. It will provide a platform for people to express an interest in the ideas, comment, explore collaborations and offer support.

Read the ideas

Brighton and Hove City Council
With a long term focus on building co-produced and co-designed services the council's 'We Live Here' project will create localised online spaces to better involve and engage citizens in decisions affecting their area, and set the foundations for a more open and transparent approach to participative democracy.

Bristol City Council
'Building a Better Bristol' will create a long term community investment vehicle that will generate the social and financial capital to invest in the delivery of developments essential for the future of Bristol: a resilient and successful economy for a vibrant, inclusive and competitive community.

Cambridgeshire
Future Transport responds to the challenge of significantly increased demand for public transport to access public services, by commissioning community-based organisations and partnerships to design new local transport solutions.

City of York
The council will use an open innovation approach where local enterprises and the local community will have the space to propose ideas and discuss potential innovations with authority staff; up to five projects will then be taken forward to test and develop them.

City of Westminster
Westminster intends to build on the success of its entrepreneurship and community Hub by creating an Impact Venture Trust to finance social innovation and enterprise in the area, whilst facilitating the transition of the authority from provider to facilitator.

Cornwall Council
Recent consultation and engagement programmes have revealed a range of seemingly intractable problems with very few answers, so to try and solve these problems the authority will use open data and open innovation technologies to stimulate creative ideas and co-develop solutions with local communities, entrepreneurs and citizens.

Derbyshire
Will seek to break the cycle of low aspirations and expectations of children in care by working with the University, an after care provider, local graduates, businesses and designers to create new practical tools to inspire and support young people to access higher education.

Essex County Council
The proposal examines how the Council can use council tax to incentivise socially responsible and money saving behaviours among residents.

Havering Council
Will develop an idea which involves the introduction of Social Investment Bonds. These Bonds would mean that the authority can invest in early intervention services that will improve the lives of children and families and will only be repayable if improved outcomes are achieved

Leicester
Partnering with the local university this proposal will harness the skills they have to offer to develop solutions, including the formation of new businesses, to the problems raised from a planned widespread community consultation process.

London Borough of Islington
Young people, working in partnership with a range of investors, will be able to drive the development and commissioning of entrepreneurial solutions that address youth worklessness through an innovative social venture.

Monmouthshire
They are fundamentally re-thinking the way they do business and they say they've woken up to the need to develop a new mind-set that is fit for the future. They will effectively occupy the space that currently exists between 'public and private' and become a truly 'blended' enabling organisation.

Reading Borough Council
Have worked with parents through a process of ethnography, service blue printing and prototyping new ideas to remodel a children's centre providing different and more responsive solutions with and for the community. This has included parents creating a peer support programme. The council now want to develop these working practices across all children's centres and other areas of the council.

Rossendale Borough Council
The council have recruited volunteers to support unemployed residents and work with local businesses to develop them into viable candidates for employment opportunities. Although the initial pilot was successful this has not been sustained so the council wants to understand why and how a new scheme may achieve sustainable success.

Stoke on Trent Council
Fluctuating fuel prices could have an adversely disproportionate effect on the area, particularly as manufacturing is vulnerable to price change, so the council is seeking to for the city to become energy self-sufficient whilst maintain its commitment to clean energy development.

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council
The council has been successful in developing a culture of enterprise in education and the approach has resulted in the creation of high levels of youth business creation which they now want to take to scale at a national level.

Wigan
The proposal focuses on how personal budgets can utilise new digital technologies to give users greater personal control and stimulate social enterprise and nano-enterprise in respect of care services.

Arrow icon green [original] Read all the summaries in detail on this Google data spreadsheet