Background
The UK Innovation District Group (UKIDG) is a peer network of ten of the UK’s leading innovation districts. Established in 2018, the group is focused on sharing best practice in order to improve shared prosperity and productivity generated by innovation districts. We are interested in these new, changing forms of urban and economic geography and the role they play in responding to the inclusive growth challenge.
UK IDG aims to bridge academic research, think tanks and government policy by connecting with practitioners, investors, businesses and innovators across every scale and sector to help better understand quality place-based innovation.
UK IDG is committed to building a fair and equitable society in acknowledgement of and respecting the fundamental human right of every person not to be discriminated against[1]. Through our work in urban innovation we support harnessing new opportunities and bridging the gap between privilege and discrimination, ensuring everyone benefits.
Purpose
As part of UK IDG’s work, we both seek to ensure diverse representation within our direct network and also support our members as they build inclusion into their place-based approaches. We are developing a D&I charter that forms an agreement defining how the UK IDG, as a membership body, incorporates equality and inclusion in its values and what that means for how we operate as a group, and ultimately for the places that our members are building.
As we develop this charter, we are seeking to work with an expert in inclusive design and inclusive practice to review our draft charter and develop an ‘impact framework’ that will sit alongside the charter and measure movement against our commitments.
The Role
The role will be on a contract basis and will act as an expert lead and advisor on the development of UK IDG’s D&I charter and commitments. There will be initial work in developing the impact framework and reviewing the draft D&I charter. Following this, the role will provide an annual check on commitments and milestone delivery alongside any other D&I advisory support on an adhoc basis.
We are looking for someone with urban development and/or placemaking experience,
experience of working with a partnership organisation or network, and specific expertise in advising on and delivering Diversity & Inclusion programmes.
Services Provided
● Review draft Diversity and Inclusion charter
● Support drafting of a D&I commitment to include in membership criteria
● Working with UK IDG’s manager, develop a D&I impact framework which would include:
● Milestones and metrics to measure success of UK IDG progress, as an organisation, on diversity and inclusion
● A template for member districts to use to build a baseline understanding of local community demographics (to measure how representative each district’s programmes are of the broader community)
● Framework for members to measure own progress against D&I targets and representation within each district
● Attend at least one IDG meeting per year as part of annual progress review
● Attend an agreed number of working meetings with the Chair and manager of UK IDG to progress delivery of the above
Resulting Outputs
● Diversity and inclusion charter
● D&I commitment included within membership criteria
● Impact framework (as detailed above)
How to respond
This is an open tender for potential bidders to respond to. A selection of consultants have also been directly invited to quote for this work.
In your response to this brief please include:
● Outline of approach
● Relevant experience
● Estimated number of days to complete the brief
● Day rate
Applications should not exceed 2 x A4 pages
Please email response and any queries to hello@ukinnovationdistrict.co.uk by 25th April. We will aim to feed back by the 6th of May. *Note the deadline has been extended for submissions to the 13th of May.
If you wish to talk through any aspects of this brief in advance of responding please contact Claire via the above email.
[1] on the grounds of gender, age, language, disability, ethnicity, cultural background, sexual orientation, religious belief, education, work experience, occupation, socio-economic background, marital status and whether or not they have carer responsibilities.
