• Sheffield Social Enterprise Network ‘Enhancing Social Impact Measurement Across South Yorkshire’s Social Enterprise Sector’ — Our project supports at least 50 established social enterprises across South Yorkshire to collect, analyse and communicate their social impact, through co-designed metrics, using a shared digital ‘Impact Reporting’ tool. By aligning metrics with the Sheffield City Goals and the open source ‘Measure Up’ framework, we’re building a consistent, inclusive approach to social value reporting. The result is a stronger evidence base that can influence local policy, unlock funding and amplify community voice.

• DiverseCity Development Trust ‘Empowering Marginalised Communities through Data-Driven Policy Innovation’ — Our project empowers underrepresented communities across South Yorkshire to lead their own data collection and shape local policy through lived experience. By training 50 participants and building a digital data hub, we aim to shift how policy is informed, making it more inclusive, evidence-based, and community-led. The initiative connects residents, universities, and policymakers to co-produce change that reflects real needs.

• Clifton Learning Partnership ‘Raising aspirations and employability through a supported mentorship programme’ — The project will offer intensive one-to-one support to two young Roma women to support them into childcare employability; providing equality of opportunity to marginalised communities, promoting inclusion and providing accessible services. A bespoke pathway will be co-designed between the young person and their mentor with support from key stakeholders exploring the various ways of accessing this employment. The participants will receive 2 hours pastoral support each week from their mentor which will be tailored to their individual needs. This project will demonstrate the value of using in-depth qualitative data and evidence in communicating the support needs of this community — large quantitative data samples are unrealistic.

• Community First Yorkshire ‘Impact Together Hub’ — The Community First Yorkshire Impact Together Hub is set to become a dynamic central resource, empowering North Yorkshire’s VCSE sector to harness the full potential of its data. By breaking down barriers to data sharing through smart tools, tailored training, and access to vital datasets, it will unlock new opportunities for insight and collaboration. This initiative aims to elevate impact measurement, strengthen organisational sustainability, and foster a more connected, data-driven VCSE community.

• Lighthouse Futures Trust ‘How to harness neurodiversity as a competitive advantage in business’ — Lighthouse Futures Trust and ThinkND are collaborating on a project that could revolutionise the support that is available for neuro-divergent people who are looking for work or are in work. By working with jobseekers, employees and employers, they will look at the key barriers around recruitment, onboarding and ongoing support and then collate and/or co-create a range of practical tools and guides that will demonstrate how employers can learn how to harness neurodiversity as a competitive advantage in business.

• My Lean Coach Limited ‘Inclusive Productivity Demonstrator: Piloting Digital Innovation for Underrepresented Yorkshire SMEs’ — This project looks to make productivity tools accessible to underrepresented SME communities, developing a culturally-sensitive diagnostic tool for Yorkshire’s diverse business contexts. The project will co-create simplified productivity templates with 15 SMEs from ethnically diverse and women-led businesses, with the goal of creating a model for inclusive productivity improvement that addresses Yorkshire’s specific regional challenges while supporting its most underrepresented business communities.

• Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority ‘Roots to Jobs: Building Green Skills Together’— The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, in partnership with Bradford College and local green sector organisations, aims to co-create a green skills development programme tailored for young people from marginalised communities, particularly refugees and asylum seekers. Building on the successful “Up Skill Down Dale” model, the project will deliver hands-on training, career networking, and policy innovation to improve access to green employment. The initiative seeks to reduce inequalities, enhance employability, and foster inclusive pathways into the green economy.

• Sheffield Futures ‘NextGen Consulting: Future-Proofing Your Workplace’ — NextGen Consulting is a youth-proofing consultancy that helps organisations become more youth-friendly by assessing their policies, culture, and practices through the lens of young people. Young consultants provide tailored recommendations to bridge the gap between employer expectations and the needs of the next generation. Our aim is to help businesses attract, engage, and retain young talent by fostering inclusive and future-ready workplaces.

• Bradford Producing Hub ‘Empowered Futures: Breaking Barriers in Arts Leadership’ — Empowered Futures is an action-research initiative that supports under-represented and minoritised artists in accessing leadership opportunities in the creative sector. It builds directly on Bradford Producing Hub interventions that have transformed Bradford’s creative ecology over the past 5 years — driving a profound shift in who makes, accesses and influences the arts.

• Darts (Doncaster Community Arts) ‘Artist Traineeships’ — Nine early career global majority artists will have the opportunity to develop their practice through hands on delivery, mentoring, coaching and support from experienced industry contacts and creative organisations. Maya Productions and darts — Doncaster’s Creative Health and Learning Charity — will lead the traineeship programme, focusing on improving pathways into the creative industries for under-represented artists. The project responds to the gap in opportunity for global majority artists to break into the industry, creating paid opportunities for development, and a broader understanding of race and allyship in South Yorkshire’s cultural sector.

• The Music Box Yorkshire CIC ‘Stay on Track’ — Stay On Track is a creative intervention project designed to engage young people involved with Leeds Youth Justice Service (YJS). We will be using DJing, rapping, beat-making, and singing, the project provides an alternative pathway to rehabilitation, helping young people develop confidence, creativity, and transferable skills that support their future education, employment, and personal growth.

• Fourteen19 Social t/a Youth Social ‘Investigating the Upscaling of our Youth Podcast Co-Production Model (PoCoM) to make Arts and Culture more accessible for young people’ — We will test the feasibility of upscaling our Youth Content Co-Production Model to provide creative and digital skills for young people (including those from minoritised communities) across the whole of West Yorkshire and beyond. Whilst we will be creating content on a variety of youth-focused subjects, this project will have a specific focus on promoting arts and culture activities being undertaken locally. Through the project we will explore ‘how to develop content with young people from minoritised groups’, ‘does peer-produced content encourage other young people to engage in arts & culture activities’ and ‘can the model become a sustainable enterprise that provides paid employment opportunities for teens, young adults and creative professionals?’

• The Leap Bradford CIC ‘Understanding Community-led Culture in Bradford and Keighley’ — The Leap is a programme supported by Arts Council England and Bradford Council that aims to provide arts and culture to everyone in Bradford District. The Leap is leading a community-led research project, in partnership with York St John University and an independent evaluator, to explore and evidence cultural leadership from underrepresented communities in Bradford and Keighley. Through peer interviews, reflective workshops, and citizen’s assemblies, the project will uncover motivations, barriers, and definitions of local cultural leadership. The findings will inform policy and practice while building a scalable model for community-led culture, culminating in a knowledge-sharing event and creative storytelling commission.

• CaVCA (Coast and Vale Community Action) ‘Good to Grow’ — Good to Grow will work with the community in Scarborough to investigate why more people don’t grow their own food, what prevents existing community food growing projects from scaling up and how barriers to food growing can be overcome.

• North York Moors National Park Authority ‘Voices for Nature: Local Leadership in Climate Resilience’ — Voices for Nature is an initiative, led by the North York Moors National Park Authority and York St John University, that helps people in remote and disadvantaged areas near the River Esk get involved in looking after their local environment. It gives communities the chance to share their ideas, learn about climate change, and take part in nature-based activities like tree planting or habitat restoration. The goal is to improve local wellbeing and make sure their voices help shape climate and environmental policy decisions.

• Yorkshire Peat Partnership (led by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust) ‘Sphagnum Pioneers’ — Sphagnum pioneers will explore how to engage communities in peatland restoration through direct involvement in growing sphagnum moss, the keystone species vital to ensuring the resilience and effective functioning of these landscapes. Communities will take a lead in exploring approaches to both propagating sphagnum at a local level and reintroducing these mosses through real world revegetation trials. The project will involve volunteers, educationalists, peat practitioners, landowners and managers in developing methods and shaping policies towards localised production of vital plants for upland restoration right here in Yorkshire.

• Connecting Crossgates (part of Leeds Christian Community Trust) ‘Right to Grow’ — Right to Grow (RTG) builds on the enthusiasm of communities in East Leeds to reclaim and transform local green spaces into vibrant hubs for sustainable food growing and nature conservation. Residents of all backgrounds and ages are encouraged to actively participate in practical growing activities, creative workshops, performances, and public forums. The project aims to influence city-wide policy and champion local areas through fostering community connections, skills and resilience.

• FoodWise Leeds ‘Leeds Food Growing Network — a local food growth plan’ — The Leeds Food Growing Network (LFGN) aims to strengthen local food growing in Leeds creating a web of community food resilience while improving greenspaces and biodiversity. LFGN aims to unify and magnify the voice of community and urban food growing, using existing policy infrastructure created to deliver the Leeds Food Strategy to better engage with researchers and policymakers to co-produce policy and deliver actions to ensure a more resilient local food system.

• LS14 Trust ‘Voices in Place — Seacroft Speaks’ — a community-led research project that puts Seacroft residents in charge of exploring the issues that matter most to them. Through training, workshops, and small research grants, local people, including young people, will lead investigations and share their findings directly with decision-makers. The project will build local skills, strengthen partnerships, and help shape future plans and services in Seacroft.

• Groundwork Yorkshire ‘Powering our Community’ — This project will work with residents from Hull’s 4 permanent Gypsy Traveller sites, through a co-design process we will explore opportunities to address inequalities experienced by residents in relation to energy and help create potential policy change at a local and national level for the community.

• Jamaica Society Leeds ‘Why Community Space Matters: Jamaica House as a Place for Intergenerational Exchange’ — The Jamaica Society Leeds is reimagining Jamaica House into a dynamic multigenerational cultural hub. Once a cornerstone for the Windrush generation in Chapeltown, Leeds, we are uniting the first, second- and third generations of Caribbean community members through cultural events, and by allocating micro-budgets to members across all the generations to imagine and deliver projects that bridge generational divides and preserve heritage. Partnering with University of Leeds researchers, the Society will gather data on what makes community spaces inclusive and sustainable, providing insights that will shape future policy and interrogate models for cultural centres across Yorkshire and beyond.

• Giroscope ‘New House Types in HU3’ — Giroscope ambition is to develop our work with BlokBuild, a local business with a mission to make the built environment sustainable through deploying innovative digital manufacturing technologies, to extend our self-help housing model in a new collaboration delivering eco-retrofit solutions to a number of Giroscope terrace housing undergoing refurbishment while instigating the next stage and deliver a transformation by developing new house types for development to lock in employment and skills development opportunities around innovative use of these new methods of construction. Giroscope’s ambition is to co-design, co-create and co-produce with the community possible new housing solutions set within a small sites context.

The projects will run until September 2026. During this time the projects will be engaging with the related thematic YPIP work package teams to identify synergies between their work, share learnings from each other’s activities, and broker stakeholder relationships.

The YPIP team will sharing updates and insights on these projects through the monthly newsletter and social media.

There will be a showcase event hosted in November 2026 where stakeholders from across the region will be invited to connect with the CIY Fund projects and YPIP team to hear how things progressed and findings.