Episode 1

Welcome to the first episode of Infuse: the podcast.

We are delighted to welcome Kellie Beirne, Director of Cardiff Capital Region City Deal to chat about why collaborative working is integral to tackling some of the societal challenges facing Wales today.

What's Infuse?

Infuse is an innovation and research programme designed to build skills and capacity for innovative future public services across the Cardiff Capital Region.

Infuse is supported by the European Social Fund through Welsh Government and is a collaboration between Cardiff University, Y Lab, Nesta, Cardiff Capital Region City Deal Office (CCR) and the ten local authorities that make up the region, including Monmouthshire County Council as the lead partner. The programme will be built around opportunities to tackle real-life questions, driven by the biggest challenges faced by the region.

Infuse partners and participants will identify a range of challenges or problems that are shared across the region. These might include decarbonisation, active travel, housing or social care. Using these shared challenges, we’ll bring together cross-regional teams in each of the three skills areas to work towards solving a part of this challenge, using new tools and methods.

Teams will receive around three months of training and support in new skills, tools and methods, followed by three months of coaching in their own organisations as they go back to put them into practice helping to change the future of public service delivery for years to come; developing new innovation skills and capacity by tackling regional public service challenges.

The programme will run until 2023, working with three cohorts of local authority and public sector workers from across the Cardiff Capital Region.