For the launch event, the organisers will be presenting a showcase of speakers who will talk about the work that already exists and what is needed to make it better. The event will run from 9AM – 12PM featuring talks followed by live Q&A with speakers including:

•  Andy Haldane, Permanent Secretary to the Levelling Up Taskforce
• Neil O’Brien, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State TBC
• Stian Westlake, CEO RSS
• Tera Allas, McKinsey
• Tom Bridges, Leeds Office Leader, Director Cities Advisory, Arup
• Tom Forth, Head of Data, Open Innovations (formerly ODILeeds)
• Nancy Hey, Executive Director, What Works Centre for Wellbeing
• Jodie Levy,  Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
• Alan Reiss, Director of Strategy, Communications and Policing
  West Yorkshire Combined Authority
• Paul Swinney, Director of Policy and Research, Centre for Cities

The RSS recently responded to the Treasury Committee inquiry on equal recovery post-pandemic, expressing concern that current data is not up to the job and calling for a rethink of what data the government is collecting.

The term ‘levelling up’ will be more familiar in gaming culture than in politics but it became a core part of political speech and decision-making in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. You might know what it means in a game, but what does it mean for the UK?

With no solid definition, ‘levelling up’ could mean something different to everyone, and with no official ‘levelling up’ dataset to work from, there isn’t a way to currently track progress or keep things accountable. Open Innovations will be leading a project to explore ‘levelling up’ from a Northern perspective, by working in the open, inviting discussion and suggestions, and developing a prototype visualisation with open data at its foundation.

What open data will we use? Well, this is where you come in…

The project will start in November 2021 and finish in February 2022, with three key stages and events that accompany them, plus opportunities for people to contribute their feedback, suggestions, data sources, etc.

Open Innovations uses a method of rapid innovation to work in a radically open way to produce results quickly and efficiently. Our process is purposely initially informally unstructured but ultimately productive to allow for free communication, knowledge exchange, change and action. Please use this document to share any thoughts, links, resources and questions.

The event will take place virtually and be live-streamed to our website here – but to join in & ask questions we ask you to sign up to be able to access the Airmeet platform.