Challenges blog | Ingenuity

Ingenuity Challenges

For this week’s blog, we thought we’d take a look at some of the Ingenuity Challenges for the 2020 Programme.

The Covid-19 crisis is forcing us to rethink the way we live. In terms of health, finance and work, it has affected some of the most vulnerable in our society, and will continue to shape our local and national economies for months to come.

But where we have to rebuild, we can build back better.

The Ingenuity Programme is designed to create impact through enterprise in communities across the UK. To do this, we are looking to tackle four key challenges:

We will be hosting regional Challenge Summits in November and December, with presentations from regional experts offering context for each challenge and helping participants understand the priorities of the problems they choose to solve.

The current Covid-19 crisis has magnified and worsened many of the key issues people living in poverty or financial instability face.

With the news last week that more than a third of UK employers plan to make staff redundant over the next three months, we need people-centred innovations that can create greater social value, and successfully address the challenges that society’s most vulnerable face. If you’re interested in addressing these needs, the Community or Prosperity Challenges might be for you.

Group of students in a circle having a discussion — Participants at Ingenuity19

A financially healthy nation is good for individuals, communities, businesses and the economy, and we must place sustainable prosperity, and the tools to achieve it, at the very core of our ideas and innovations.

In the UK we are currently experiencing a ‘loneliness epidemic’ that is corroding modern life, and a housing crisis that affects over eight million people. Covid-19 has shone a spotlight on the inequalities suffered by BAME communities. How can we bring people together and build stronger, more resilient communities?

How can we use technology to re-imagine ‘place’ and empower our communities? As keynote speaker Patrick Vernon OBE (Centre for Ageing Better) remarked at our Building Better Communities Feeder Event over the Summer, “It’s going to be critical for the future that we invest in people.”

Group of young people chatting

We’ll be teaming up with key charity partners like Crisis and Groundwork for some of the Challenges.

The top ideas that respond to the Crisis Challenge – to work together and find innovation solutions to help end homelessness for good – will be invited to receive specialist mentoring from experts in the charity, as well as its members who have lived experience of homelessness.

Meanwhile Groundwork is looking to support new solutions that can build community resilience, through providing equitable access to nature, tackling loneliness and social isolation and supporting sustainable local economies.

So if this all interests you, take time to choose your Challenge, and start tackling the key issues that matter to you.