Groundswell Innovation’s founding director to speak at the Innovation Places Summit

By Groundswell Innovation

15 Sep 2021

Jane Dalton, director and Creative Catalyst at Groundswell Innovation, will be speaking at the Innovation Places Summit on 23 September, alongside place leaders, policy makers and other innovation experts from across the country.

Groundswell Innovation is based in Lancaster, but the team works across the UK and has been supporting businesses to deliver innovation that feeds on customer insight and builds company growth for more than a decade.

The Innovation Places Summit will bring together national place-makers and innovation practitioners who are building the next generation of UK innovative hubs, quarters, and districts. Innovation is critical for economic growth and stability for the UK as we recover from Covid, and Groundswell Innovation has worked closely with two North West towns to enable them to rise to the challenge of this recovery.

Jane will be talking at the Innovation Places Summit about Groundswell’s work with Preston’s Towns Fund project on the subject of Democratising Innovation. The Groundswell team has worked to support Preston’s Towns Fund Board in their bid for Government Towns Funding and continues to lead on the project’s community engagement, ensuring that social value was embedded from the start, in line with Preston’s strong emphasis on Community Wealth Building.

Said Jane: “We know the importance with any public consultation that engagement is authentic. This isn’t just about the numbers and speaking to as many people as possible: place-based innovation has to be meaningful to the people it impacts and making sure we achieve this for Preston is central to the ongoing work that we are doing; it isn’t just about securing one large pot of funding to help just one part of the city, it’s about really delivering on the City Investment Plan goals that aim to put the richness of life within reach for the people of Preston.”

Preston has been awarded £20.9m of funding to help to drive Preston’s economic and further sustainable growth and productivity in the long-term. The funding will be centred on capital regeneration via the Harris Quarter Investment Programme, an area which includes The Harris, Preston Markets and the new Animate cinema complex.

Groundswell teams have also worked with the Crewe Towns Fund bid, which successfully secured £22.9m of funding for a total of 10 projects. Find out more about the Crewe project and the work that Groundswell Innovation do at https://www.groundswellinnovation.co.uk/