Co-creating a sustainable and inclusive future for Northern Ireland through skills development and innovation (CoSI)

Northern Ireland (NI) has a long history of lagging behind other regions in the UK across a range of economic performance indicators, most notably in terms of productivity, with NI estimated to be 17% less productive than the UK average. NI also underperforms in terms of early-stage entrepreneurship and has remained in the bottom of the UK Innovation Survey since 2011. The underperformance of NI is a persistent feature of the local economy which is complex, due to the unique features of NI's community and environment. For example, instability of their devolved local government and political systems, cultural divisions between two primary demographic groups, rich heritage and deep inequalities sub regionally presents multifaceted challenges. We suggest that NI's inherent skills deficits and complex supply ecosystem are dominant factors contributing to NI's lagging performance amongst other UK regions and impacting NI's ability to have a clear direction on how to achieve inclusive sustainable growth. The supply and quality of education and skills in an economy is vital for economic growth. The just released independent review of Invest Northern Ireland also identifies that the NI skills ecosystem is cluttered, uncoordinated and involves duplicated efforts. They recommend that a review of skills is needed in NI, requiring co-operations between various organisations across NI. Our project seeks to contribute to this. We argue that NI's skills-based challenges can only be addressed by fostering strong partnerships and collaborations with stakeholders, communities and local leaders to enable fresh thinking and the co-creation of innovative solutions which will have multiplier benefits across the NI region. We identify a vision to develop a Local Policy Innovation Partnership (LPIP) in NI which brings together stakeholders and community organisations, who have a role in, and/or an influence on, the skills landscape. The purpose of the NI LPIP would be to develop a value network, built on the premise of a community of practice of proactive actors who wish to not only address their individual agenda but who want to work collaboratively with likeminded individuals, to develop solutions and share 'promising' and best practices which address skills gaps and inequities across a range of sectors and communities. It will build on established pockets of activity, where groups have led previous small scale stakeholder consultations to inform the Northern Ireland Skills Strategy. However, existing conversations have been fragmented, with limited impact, due to the need for an holistic and collaborative approach to solving key skills-based challenges. The overall aim of this Phase 1 project is to bring together existing stakeholder partnerships and community networks who are working on initiatives which aim to address NI's skills-based challenges and to encourage further stakeholder partnerships and community representatives, to join an inclusive open forum to address NI's skills provision and discuss future needs. To achieve this, we will undertake a five month workplan involving landscape evidence analysis and mapping of existing skills provisions, stakeholder and community engagement and partnership building activities via sandpits and workshops, and the development of an action plan on how to operationalise and ensure the sustainability of a LPIP hub focused on enhancing skills provision across NI. This hub will be based around the premises of innovation, co-creation and co-production. The geographical coverage of our project will span the whole of NI since a holistic approach is needed with an open forum, to take stock of existing work being done across groups to tackle NI's skills-based challenges and to develop a value network to move forward collaboratively by co-creating solutions across stakeholder and community groups.