Three Derry projects receive £400k funding to elevate supports for their communities

Three Derry-based community projects have been awarded a total of £400,000 from the British Science Association’s The Ideas Fund to continue and extend their work improving the mental wellbeing of their local community, alongside researchers who are helping them turn their ideas into reality.  

The projects awarded include an addiction recovery organisation that focuses on improving mental wellbeing through exercise, a leading parenting charity that supports men to have more open conversations, and a collective of wellbeing practitioners who have developed holistic activities for the local community.

Launched in January 2021, The Ideas Fund is a grants programme, delivered by the British Science Association with support from Wellcome. It aims to connect community groups with researchers to explore ideas related to improving mental wellbeing and diversifying the voices within health research.  

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The Fund supports projects that involve communities in four regions of the UK: North West Northern Ireland, Hull, the Scottish Highlands and Islands and Oldham. One of the four projects in North West Northern Ireland to receive funding this year is ARC Fitness: 

ARC Fitness is an organisation based in Derry, Northern Ireland, that offers practical support for people struggling with addiction and promotes healthy and sustainable recoveries through exercise and positive lifestyle choices. The project collaborated with two researchers, from Ulster University to conduct research into gender-specific recovery programmes. 

Their work so far with the ideas fund has focused on whether there are any differences within gender-specific groups when it came to addiction recovery programmes. They took a mixed group with male and female participants, an all-female group and an all-male group, and then assessed if there were any differences in outcomes.

Their research showed that the mixed group had the best outcomes. This next stage will see the organisation move in a different direction

Gary Rutherford, Founder, ARC Fitness said: “Working with The Ideas Fund has been so refreshing and supportive. Their flexible approach to managing, engaging, supporting and delivering the fund allows organisations like ARC to remain at the centre of project delivery and direction.

"The focus on developing research capacity and relationships with academics allows organisations to better capture and understand the positive impact they have on their communities. 

“We feel that allowing recovery communities to actively shape research that addresses their needs, moving beyond being passive subjects is a vital process.”

To date, The Ideas Fund has supported more than 70 projects, totalling around £7 million, with a focus on addressing the systemic challenges that community groups and researchers can face in working together.  

The phase of grant funding announced today will cover the next three years. The Ideas Fund team will work with all the funded projects to gather feedback into how community group and researcher partnerships work and provide examples of the impact and what becomes possible when these collaborations are supported. 

The other two Derry-based projects to receive funding are Parenting Focus and Yellow Wood.

Parenting Focus work across Northern Ireland supporting and championing the role of parents. Their grant has focused on their “Dad’s Minds Matter” project, that looks at ways of supporting men to have conversations about wellbeing.

They will continue to collaborate with an independent researcher and develop a Lobbying Action Learning group to advocate for work with men and dads, drawing on their learning and approaches.  

Yellow Wood are a collective of wellbeing practitioners who, together with social workers and patients, co-produced a range of holistic activities embedded within a GP surgery.

They will use their grant to explore the positive outcomes of working with their researcher and use this as a tool to help the patient committee create ways to articulate their learnings and influence change.  

Chris Manion, Head of Grants at the British Science Association said: “We’re so proud of how the Fund has grown and are excited to see how these incredible projects can have an even greater impact.

"With communities taking the lead, The Ideas Fund is demonstrating a new approach to partnering with researchers, and we’re seeing already how this can help make real improvements to people’s wellbeing."