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ARC Accelerate 2024 Pitch Final: Celebrating Innovation and Impact
We’re super excited to share the results of the ARC Accelerate 2024 Pitch Final. Huge congratulations to the Giving HOPE team for taking home the top prize!
Late last year, our cohort came together to pitch their groundbreaking ventures for a share of the prize fund. From creative tech solutions to projects tackling big social challenges, their ventures are nothing short of inspiring. Each team had to prove they’ve got what it takes to make a real impact and show us how they’d use the funding to level up their ventures.
Shoutout to the Winner
After much deliberation, the judges crowned Giving HOPE from Lancaster University as the winner of our £20,000 pitch prize. Huge congratulations to the Giving HOPE team: Claire Mason, Kate Chivers, and The HOPE Mothers Group!
The Giving HOPE (Hold On, Pain Eases) project aims to minimise the trauma experienced by mothers and babies separated at birth due to safeguarding concerns. At the centre of the Giving HOPE offer are the HOPE Boxes, one for mother and one for baby, each containing items to support mother and baby and that reflect their underpinning aims: to support connection, promote identity, recognise grief and loss and minimise trauma.
Meet the Teams
A huge thank you to all our teams for their hard work and incredible progress over the course of the ARC Accelerate programme. Here’s a quick look at the brilliant ventures that took part in the ARC 2024 cohort:
EDRAF-TECH – University College London
- Team: Prof Lucia Michelutti, Barbara Verardo, Dr Tommaso Sbriccoli
- Research: Social Anthropology, International Development
- An Alternative Ethnographic Driven Risk Analysis Framework (EDRAF) that minimises risks in the social lending/impact investing sector in rural South Asia and beyond.
WITHIN TOUCHING DISTANCE – University of Greenwich
- Team: Prof Jorge Lopes Ramos, Persis-Jadé Maravala, Ross Flight, Sel Ertas, Kesia Guillery, Alex Peckham
- Research: Arts, Healthcare Simulation, Mental Health, XR
- WTD uses arts-based immersive content, human touch and XR technologies to provide effective empathy training for nursing students and positive mental health outcomes for patients.
Mindset Dynamics – University of Birmingham
- Team: Dr Abena Dadze-Arthur and John Cooke
- Research: Cultural Organisational Management
- Mindset Dynamics is a consultancy service that helps organisations to develop a bespoke, people-centred approach to executing changes and stimulating social innovation.
The Hub – Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA)
- Team: Dr Sadie Watson, Dr Sara Perry, Dr Emma Dwyer, Dr Katrina Foxton
- Research: Archaeology, Heritage
- The Hub uses archaeology to maximise social value opportunities within infrastructure or development projects, to ensure affected communities can benefit from inclusion in archaeological process.
Project Fair – The University of Edinburgh
- Team: Dr Ishbel McWha-Hermann and Julia Porter
- Research: Psychology, International Development
- Project Fair supports International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) to design fair human resource policies and practices, particularly related to pay and benefits.
LeicSurvey – University of Leicester
- Team: Dr Himanshu Kaul, Prof Sarah Scott, Dr Nataly Papadopoulou, Dr Mukund Janardhanan, Sai Kumar Mattireddy, Alagu Arunachalam
- Research: Heritage, Software, Data Science, Hospices
- LeicSurvey is an inclusive, ethical, and frictionless survey tool aiming to quantify the impact of heritage sites and assets on human wellbeing.
AFFempreneurs – University of Bristol
- Team: Dr Zibah A. Nwako
- Research: Social Sciences, Enterprise Education
- Business skills training alongside wellbeing and welfare programmes for disadvantaged young female micro-entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Pin the Tale – University of the West of England
- Team: Dr Jack Lowe
- Research: Human Geography, Media Studies
- Scaling a digital game created using the what3words app, which challenges players to share and discover stories about places that are meaningful to them.
LivDem: Living Well with Dementia – University of the West of England
- Team: Dr Emily Dodd, Prof Richard Cheston, and Dr Natasha Woodstoke
- Research: Psychology, Public Health
- A training programme to enable facilitators to deliver the LivDem course; helping people living with dementia to adjust to their diagnosis.
Roam Within – University of Cambridge
- Team: Dr Tina Basi, Tamara Short
- Research: Sociology, Psychology, Neuroscience
- Roam Within aim to reduce loneliness and social isolation by teaching people meditation that meets them where they are at. No phones, no apps.
Gamify.It – University of Cambridge
- Team: Dr Alexis Litvine, Dr Juan Hiriart, Nathan Bowman
- Research: History, Digital Humanities, Education, Game Design, Game Development
- Gamify.It build learning experience from cutting-edge research by working with educators and researchers to create school-ready learning material of a new kind.
Uni CoPilot – University of Bristol
- Team: Dr Robert Sharples, Eleanor Chapman
- Research: Education, Applied Linguistics
- Personalised support for international students: settle in quickly, ace your assignments and love the experience!
Art Box XLM – Leeds Beckett University
- Team: Dr Ben Dalton
- Research: Communication Design
- Opening up what big, rich, surprising digital art in the home can be. Art Boxes are a publishing medium for artists, galleries and festivals to use.
TEXL – University of Exeter
- Team: Dr Michelle Mahdon, Prof Niels Van Quaquebeke, Prof Alex Gerbasi, Yaxin Zheng
- Research: Leadership, Personal Development
- A headache free 360 personal development tool that contains a ‘plug and play’ library of robust measures complete with lifetime tracking and global benchmarking data.
Multimotion – University of Essex
- Team: Dr Erik Jacobi and Dr Vito De Feo
- Research: Marketing, Psychology, Computer Science
- As part of their neuromarketing consultancy services, the team are developing Multimotion, an algorithm that analyses research participants’ emotional states by incorporating a range of biosignals.
Immersive Experience Network – University of Birmingham
- Team: Dr Joanna Bucknall, Andy Barnes, Sheena Patel, Owen Kingston, Nicole Jacobus, Natalie Scott, Lucy Kean
- Research: Performance Studies, Cultural Studies
- The Immersive Experience Network is a catalyst to support the live and location-based experience creative communities to become a more visible and sustainable CCI sector.
LCR Community Asset Holding Co. – University of Liverpool
- Team: Dr Alan Southern, Helen Heap, Nicola Foy
- Research: Social Sciences (Politics, Economic Geography, Business)
- The LCR Community Asset Holding company will take on and hold land and property on behalf of social enterprises while they raise funds, secure planning permission and identify development partners to rent or own these assets.
START – University College London
- Team: Dr Sarah Amador, Prof Gill Livingston, Dr Penny Rapaport
- Research: Psychology, Dementia, Mental Health
- START (STrAtegies for RelaTives) is a manual based therapy for family carers of people living with dementia. It is proven to be clinically and cost effective in reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms and increasing quality of life for family carers.
Bridging Histories – University of Bristol
- Team: Dr Joanna Burch-Brown, George Francis, Dana Saxon, Katie Chandler-Clarke, Jaz Wilkinson, Paz Huxley, //Kabbo Hue Ferdinand
- Research: Philosophy
- Bridging Histories is a creative changemaking initiative working towards a world where everybody feels celebrated for who they are, rooted in cultural heritage; and empowered to be a positive changemaker.
Giving HOPE – Lancaster University
- Team: Claire Mason, Kate Chivers, and The HOPE Mothers Group
- Research: Sociology, Social Work, Perinatal Mental Health
- HOPE Boxes aim to reduce trauma experienced by mothers and babies separated due to safeguarding concerns by promoting ongoing connection and supporting longer-term grief and identity work.
Thank You to Our Supporters
We couldn’t have done this without the amazing support from ESRC and AHRC, brilliant Technology Transfer Officers and Professional Staff from across the UK, and all the mentors and judges who helped guide our 2024 cohort along the way.
Congratulations to all the teams for their hard work and innovative ideas. The future feels a little brighter knowing these ventures are out there making a difference!