REALITIES (Researching Evidence-based Alternatives in Living, Imaginative, Traumatised, Integrated, Embodied Systems) is a collective of lived and felt experience community researchers already embedded within three localities in Scotland (Clackmannanshire; Easter Ross in the Highland; and North Lanarkshire); local council representatives; third sector organisations; artists; environmentalists; Scottish national dance, theatre and singing bodies; an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government; and academics from diverse disciplines including health policy; health economics; mental health nursing; counselling, psychotherapy and applied social sciences; new public management; human geography; environmental sociology; design innovation and participatory design; and the arts. Our life experiences, work in communities and research has made us accept that we're part of a fragmented, traumatised system. Guided by Karen Treisman's thinking on organisational trauma, we're seeing the system as the 'client' or 'vulnerable participant' or 'deprived person' with 'lived experience'. Burnt out and suffering from compassion fatigue, the traumatised system polarises people, places and processes. It's crisis driven; avoidant or detached emotionally to cope with insurmountable global inequities. It's chaotic; dysregulated; disconnected. Our multi-site collaboration will co-design and test the scalable REALITIES model - to piece together the fragmented parts of the system to bring about integrated systemic change through conscious and co-ordinated engagement in hyper-local communities - using a multi-faceted approach that connects people, places, processes and power. We'll think differently and creatively about divergent perceptions of reality (ontology); different types of knowledge and evidence (epistemology) in the system (for example, how dance movement can sit alongside a statistical analysis); and we'll explore the ethics of vulnerability (who decides who is and isn't vulnerable and what does this label mean for the so-called vulnerable?). We're also uniting academics from multiple disciplines, who use diverse methodological approaches to analyse health disparities, and bringing them into deep, critical conversations about data, methods, theories and analysis. The REALITIES model will take us towards methodological convergence (or help us find ways to integrate methodological divergence) that situates participatory, arts-informed, creative-relational, (post)-qualitative approaches alongside positivist, scientific approaches in the evidence-base. In summary, our team will: i) facilitate cross-partner collaborations in three localities - Clackmannanshire; Easter Ross; and North Lanarkshire (NL) - to establish multiple, clearly defined asset hubs in these neighbourhoods. The hubs have focus on creatively connecting employability, health and social care (particularly mental health), transport accessibility, community learning and development, and the environment. ii) map and investigate how Integrated Joint Boards in these localities work with non-statutory community groups to connect cultural, natural, social and creative-relational assets to address health disparities; iii) explore how excluded communities in the system - 'The Outliers' - namely prisoners, ex-offenders, refugees and those experiencing homelessness are integrated within statutory and non-statutory services and partnerships in these localities; iv) co-design and explore the new scalable REALITIES model across emergent asset hubs in the three localities to understand how we can collaboratively create healthier communities across Scotland.

It is widely recognised that low density development is unsustainable and generates significant Green House Gases (GHGs). Nevertheless, most UK development is built on greenfield land where public transportation is poor and services are scarce. If the UK is serious about 'net zero', then new ways of planning and developing are urgently required. 'Urban retrofit' is defined as repairing existing places by adapting urban form to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions, protect the environment and support sustainable lifestyles. Changes to the layout of neighbourhoods are starting to be delivered, including via infrastructure programmes such as separated bike lanes, planning policies that encourage high-densities, and community-based projects like urban greening. The problem is that implementation is slow, fragmented and increasingly controversial. Investment often flows to affluent places rather than communities in the greatest need of support, and the principal actors in the UK's planning and development systems face various delivery challenges. Planning authorities struggle with institutional inertia and time-limited funding meaning retrofitting is poorly coordinated. Property developers stick to tried and tested business models to reduce risk resulting in a preference for low density, mono-use greenfield development rather than mixed-use projects on brownfield land. Communities face capacity challenges and place adaptation is often contested. If the UK is to meet its net zero targets and achieve a just transition, then urban retrofitting must be prioritised, equitably directed and implemented more effectively. URBAN RETROFIT UK will be led by the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence and coproduced with international, national and local planning, property and community partners, including in five UK core cities - Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow and Sheffield. Its aim is to examine the barriers to urban retrofitting, challenge the prevailing growth-logic of planning and development, and coproduce a conceptual framework plotting the critical points of intervention needed to scale up retrofitting through planning and development systems. The objectives are to: Conduct a global evidence review on urban retrofit informed by international partners and a study tour. Identify and investigate a series of urban retrofit cases in collaboration with local authority partners to understand what is working and pinpoint where implementation gaps could be closed. Work with partners to understand where the spatial inequalities of current urban retrofit practice lie and how the barriers to 'scaling up' effective and equitable practices could be addressed. Establish an international URBAN RETROFIT HUBS network between UK and Global North cities facing comparable place-adaptation challenges and initiate new two-way learning partnerships with Global South cities where the context for urban retrofit is different but opportunities exist to explore lesson-sharing. To maximise knowledge exchange across sectoral boundaries and between places, URBAN RETROFIT UK's findings will be shared throughout the project at jointly delivered events with UK partners and internationally via the URBAN RETROFIT HUBS network. New theoretical perspectives on the UK's planning and development systems and coproduced empirical evidence on urban retrofit will be shared through an international symposium and evidence review, a report, film and magazine articles, and academic outputs including articles and an edited book.

Recent research shows that remaining active is a vital component in healthy ageing and that exercise provides protection against mental decline in old age. People are more mobile if they live in an appropriate environment, one that is safe, accessible and has good services. To date, much guidance has focused on overcoming barriers in the environment, such as steps without handrails or poor quality lighting. Removing such barriers is important but this approach alone will not encourage people to be more active. We need to understand the positive qualities that encourage people to go out, remain mobile, and give them pleasure into very old age. Our proposal builds on growing evidence that mood and emotion influence people's willingness to be active, which is in turn influenced by the experience of different environments - the 'mood' of one place versus another. Places need to be attractive, in order to support positive moods, and to draw people into them. Some places offer peace and quiet, others offer sociability, excitement or a sense of fun. The environment needs to offer different opportunities according to how people feel at the time. Well-designed places don't automatically put people in a good mood, but we think places that match the emotional needs of the moment contribute to a self-reinforcing virtuous cycle. If the mood of a place is right then people will get out and about, feel better, take better care of their environment, and think of their environment more positively. Positive emotions broaden people's awareness and encourage them to think and act in novel ways, and to be more curious and exploratory, both mentally and physically. Environments that encourage positive moods affect how competent people are at carrying out everyday tasks, such as preparing meals, going to the shops or planning an outing. People who feel competent are more likely to focus on the positive, to feel well, to make healthy choices, and to be more mobile. We will draw on our studies of the patterns, causes, and effects of health conditions among groups of people (epidemiology), combined with techniques in neuroscience involving brain imaging. We will also work in equal partnership with older people, including stroke survivors and people with dementia, to design together better environments. This innovative combination of approaches will help us to deliver new ideas about the design of places that support positive emotions, reduce anxiety, and encourage people to be more active and mobile, long into old age. Well-designed and maintained environments should make mobility an easy, enjoyable and meaningful choice. Our research is structured around four Work Packages involving: (1) designing together with older people, (2) examining data from recordings of neural signals (EEG) while people are moving through different environments, (3) studying information from a large group of older people born in the 1920s and 30s, to understand patterns of environment, activity and health over their life course, and (4) working with partners to evaluate and share our results and develop illustrated, user-friendly guidance on how to provide better environments in future. Our team of researchers has expertise in environment, health, wellbeing, social policy and collaborative design, with an excellent track record of past Research Council and other major grants. We have experience in providing design guidance for the built environment, innovative approaches to measuring people's responses to their environment, working with them to understand their preferences, and analysing the implications of results. We also have experience in mapping important aspects of the environment. To maximise the impact of our research, we will mobilise our ongoing partnerships with policy-makers at national and local government level, with professional bodies, and with third sector organisations supporting older people and age-friendly environmental design.

We often hear 'the system' is broken, but what do we mean by this? How can changing the way we think about, define, research, evidence, monitor, evaluate and resource 'the system' lead to meaningful change for deprived communities? How will this change benefit those who have first-hand experience of trauma, homelessness, poverty, unemployment, displacement, poor mental health or imprisonment? REALITIES takes a human-systems approach noting 'health and social care systems' (HSCS) are constructed mental representations of relationships existing in the world to promote health for people. Our Scottish consortium of 57 people has five established asset hubs in Clackmannanshire, Dundee, Easter Ross, Edinburgh and North Lanarkshire with strong relationships uniting conflicting ways of seeing the world. Through phase 2, we co-produced a systems-level model with deprived communities, policymakers, practitioners and researchers collecting and respecting different types of knowledge and alternative evidence-bases (from arts performances to nature walks; words to statistics) as equally important to understand complexities of unjust and avoidable health differences. Foundational funding evidenced REALITIES is able to transcend the challenge for our currently imagined HSCS. The medical model of disease shaping who and what is considered to be part of 'the health system' has brought benefits to human existence, though key actors within these place-based HSCS systems understand the limitations of this systems-framing for human flourishing. At present, they don't have a way to help reimagine them. REALITIES provides exploration and method for this reimagining. A model representing collective pathways producing creative routes for people to get the healthcare they need at the right time of their journeys by co-researching and co-creating with them the "what, whom, how, and why" - leading to successful connections between individuals with health and social needs and community-based opportunities for health and wellbeing improvement. We are a transdisciplinary collective of individuals with lived and felt experience of inequalities working alongside policymakers; local authorities; charities; artists; environmentalists and researchers from policy; health humanities; arts; psychology; human geography; environmental sociology; dentistry; medicine; statistics; economics; counselling; psychotherapy; management; medical anthropology; design and innovation. We will: understand what work is needed to enable places to reimagine and build 'systems' that create equitable health and wellbeing. explore and explain how links between creativity, relationships and nature create healthier and more resilient communities and environments for people in deprived areas. support creative, participatory processes, enabling communities to construct shared mental models (systems) using different ways of knowing (epistemologies) and perceiving reality (ontologies). combine different ways of knowing, enabling a more complete representation of bio-psycho-social-political factors which create 'health' and ways in which these are experienced by marginalised people. support communities to construct place-based versions of systems encompassing all aspects of health and wellbeing, and make purposeful changes in the nature of their relationships with each other and their environment. explore the usefulness of 'standard' Health Economic evaluation tools to assess Social Return of Investment, working with communities to re-conceptualise and re-define measures of 'value' and 'quality of life' in relation to human experience.

The Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE) will be an independent, multi-disciplinary and multi-sector consortium of academic and non-academic stakeholders. CaCHE will be UK-wide in coverage (across all four nations and at different spatial scales within), as well as UK-level in focus. It will advance knowledge and improve the evidence base for both housing policy and practice in all parts of the U.K. CaCHE will be organised as a "hub and spoke" network with its administrative core in Glasgow and a physical presence in all 5 sub-national knowledge exchange hubs in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales & the South West, the North & Midlands, and London, East & South East. Additionally, our six research themes will cross cut the different geographies depending on relevancy and appropriateness. The management team will be responsible for overall strategy, operational delivery, co-ordination, data navigation, research and KE. The management team of three academics (Gibb, Watkins and Orford) will be supplemented by a senior non-academic lead on knowledge exchange and communications (Smart), plus a full time programme manager, KE and communications, administrative and technical support staff. The evidence centre and its management team will be accountable to a funders group and an international advisory board. The main consortium members are the Universities of Glasgow, Sheffield, Bristol, Cardiff, Ulster, Reading, Sheffield Hallam, St. Andrews and Heriot-Watt, along with the National Institute of Social and Economic Research, CIH, RICS and the RTPI. The consortium has a lengthy list of institutional and individual collaborators at regional and national level and our activity will be supported 'in kind' and direct contributions from additional partners including Crisis, the Wheatley Group, NatCen, Shelter, Rightmove and several more. Our consortium also has specific project plans with four complementary ESRC investments: Urban Big Data Centre, What Works Scotland, Public Policy Institute for Wales, and the ADRC-Scotland, and will seek to collaborate with others including the What Works Centre for Wellbeing. Initially, a five year programme, CaCHE will seek to become self-financing sustained beyond this period. It will do so by regular scanning of opportunities with partners, and by also being impactful and influential through a combination of rigorous evidencing, prioritised across six research themes, which in turn will generate a new primary research agenda to be prosecuted by the evidence centre. A key way in which relevance and credibility will be sustained is through the comprehensive nature and persistence of our knowledge exchange and collaborative working with non-academic stakeholders. We will repeatedly utilise an innovative collaborative working practice - the Tobin Project Process - in order to build a consensus through rigorous and intensive examination of the key questions and priorities exercising non-academic partners and our stakeholders nationally and in each region. In this way, we will co-produce our evidence review and research strategy priorities and will fully engage, mobilise and disseminate findings with academic and particularly non-academic groups through our network of networks (i.e. drawing on existing networks of contacts via our non-academic and academic partners). CaCHE will promote and support interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work and invest in knowledge exchange training for staff to maximise the impact of our multiple dissemination channels: non-technical briefing, summaries, academic and trade publications, targeted technical reports, high standard non technical international evidence review, blog posts, tweets, audio and visual pod casts, roadshows, seminars, conferences, workshops and media contributions. The evidence centre will support an extensive programme of staff secondments, promoting mobility between the academy and the policy and practice communi