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Business and investment
Our Smart Belfast urban innovation programme aims to stimulate collaborative innovation between businesses, industry, academia, public sector, and communities to tackle some of Belfast’s urban challenges.
Our ambition is to find new ways to harness this innovation to further support Belfast’s transformation into a more productive and sustainable city that provides a rich quality of life for our citizens.
To read about our work, go to Smart Belfast (link opens in a new window).
Our City Innovation Office is working with partners to deliver a range of innovation projects in Belfast. Some of our current projects include:
The Belfast 5G Innovation Region programme is delivering innovative projects powered by advanced wireless technologies, a 5G funding competition for SMEs and an Enablement Programme to support the advanced wireless ecosystem in the Belfast region. The Belfast region is one of 10 5G Innovation Regions across the UK.
Our Belfast 5G Innovation Region (5GIR) programme is working with businesses, academia, and the public sector to support the adoption of 5G and other advanced wireless networks in the Belfast region.
We are also working with partners to deliver a series of commercially-focused use cases that leverage 5G's potential in the transport and logistics, creative industries, construction, and advanced manufacturing industry sectors:
Applications are now open for a £280,000 funding competition which aims to support local businesses and industries in the Belfast region to harness the power of 5G to deliver enhanced operations and services.
Grants of between £50,000 and £100,000 are available to develop innovative projects and use cases that combine the unique benefits of 5G with digital technologies, such as automation, AI, IoT, robotics and immersive applications, to deliver economic, social, and environmental benefits.
Online briefing event
Register for our online briefing event taking place at 11am on Wednesday 28 August 2024 and hear about the competition scope, criteria, and application process. You can also ask questions during a Q&A session.
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Find out more about the 5G funding competition
The competition is open to businesses and organisations located in the Belfast Region City Deal council areas: Antrim and Newtownabbey, Ards and North Down, Belfast, Lisburn and Castlereagh, Mid and East Antrim, and Newry, Mourne and Down.
The competition closes on 22 September 2024.
Our council partners in the Belfast Region area are:
Read more information about Belfast 5G Innovation Region programme (link opens in new window)
The Belfast region, led by Belfast City Council, has secured £3.8 million of wireless innovation funding from the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology as part of its UK 5G Innovation Regions programme.
Our HUB-IN (Hub of Innovation) project along Belfast’s Maritime Mile is exploring how digital innovation can help to sustain, enhance, and preserve the unique heritage of the city’s waterfront. £120,000 of funding has been awarded to six proposals from Belfast’s creative and digital businesses, artists, and innovators to develop interactive visitor experiences to animate and enrich the Maritime Mile.
We launched a new £575,000 XR funding competition in spring 2024 to support local SMEs to innovate in immersive technologies and enhance visitor experiences. Augment the City Challenge Fund is enabling local innovators to develop prototypes using immersive technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality to support organisations that are designing new visitor attractions in Belfast and elsewhere.
We’re working with Belfast Harbour, Belfast Metropolitan College, Catalyst, Queen’s University Belfast, Ulster University, and advisory partner Invest Northern Ireland to establish Belfast as a globally significant destination for innovation.
The Innovation City Belfast partnership is driving forward an ambitious agenda for our city’s innovation economy which is a major engine for growth and success.
For more information, go to Innovation City Belfast (link opens in a new window) and follow @ICBelfast on X.com.
Digital innovation has an increasingly dominant role to play in urban, social and economic policy.
We want to find ways to harness this innovation to better support Belfast’s transformation to a more productive and sustainable city that provides a rich quality of life for our citizens.
First devised in 2017, the Smart Belfast Urban Innovation framework nurtures an environment in which innovators from across industry, academia, the public sector and from our communities can work together to find new ways to address Belfast’s major urban and economic challenges. Smart Belfast is constructed around the concept of ‘urban innovation’. Rather than restrict the idea of innovation to a purely economic or business development agenda, we argue that there is an important, mutually beneficial interplay between growing our innovation economy and exploiting digital innovation to address major urban policy issues. These include the city’s response to climate change, healthy living, sustainable urban mobility and economic transformation.
Our new framework, which runs to 2026, incorporates many important ideas that have emerged over the past few years, not least of which has been learning from society’s response to the global pandemic.
We’ve also sought to find ways to maximise the opportunities offered by the £120 million Belfast Region City Deal digital investments that are planned for the coming decade. Our new approach acknowledges the exciting potential of new initiatives such as the Innovation City Belfast partnership.
Our refreshed framework puts much greater emphasis on the importance of place and place-making to urban innovation - an approach that has resulted in our commitment to a Smart District right in the heart of the city.
Urban innovation is a collective effort. We can offer a leadership and convening role, but ultimately, partners and communities across the city need to work together to cultivate an urban innovation culture and ecosystem. We’d like to thank everyone who has contributed to Belfast’s Urban Innovation Framework and look forward to working with you to realise our shared ambitions for the city.
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