On April 28^th, 2023, Ciarán Hargey (Market Development Association), Hamza Shakeel (ECIT), Gareth Robinson, and Chloe Carragher (QCAP) met with key members of QUB’s Global Innovation Institute (GII) to launch their latest collaborative project - Smart City-zens.

 

Funded by GII Pilot Project / BRCD Pump-Priming fund, the Smart City-zens project highlights the Market area of South Belfast as one of the only urban centre communities to sit within the footprint of the ongoing innovation project Smart Belfast.

 

As such, it stresses the importance of showcasing the voices of local residents and providing them with not only the skills to actively partake in critical research but also the necessary tools and opportunities to do so as stakeholders. This will be primarily enacted through young residents (aged 16–18) who will be invited to become Community Researchers and learn a range of highly sought after skills including but not limited to how to undertake research within the community using low-cost sensors, collect, analyse, and understand data, lead engagement groups, and co-design the future of Smart Belfast.

 

Upon completion of the project*, the Smart City-zen team hope that Market residents will feel confident in informing the technological transformation going on around them rather than experiencing it as something they have no say in / is external to the community.

 

*This project is expected to run throughout April-August 2023, findings will be showcased at a closing event (tbc).