Partners
The Data Lab enables industry, public sector and world-class university researchers to innovate and develop new data science capabilities in a collaborative environment. Its core mission is to generate significant economic, social and scientific value from big data.
With a Scotland-wide presence and Hubs in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, it is in close proximity to leading industry and university institutions with world-class research in informatics and computer science. Hubs are focused on building relationships locally and delivering a range of activities that span across the three key areas:
The Urban Big Data Centre is a UK-wide data service for researchers who want to use big data to address a range of urban challenges, both local and global. Funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Urban Big Data Centre is a unique facility that brings together the expertise of urban social scientists, data scientists, and statisticians from the University of Glasgow and seven partner universities. It supports researchers, policymakers, businesses, third sector organisations, and everyday citizens to harness the potential of big data to develop solutions for environmentally sustainable, economically resilient, and socially just cities.
The Scottish Cities Alliance is a unique collaboration of Scotland’s seven cities and the Scottish Government, working together to deliver economic growth. By combining the strengths of Scotland’s seven cities – Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Perth and Stirling, and in partnership with the Scottish Government, the Alliance aims to promote the country’s great economic potential at home and abroad to attract external investment, stimulate economic activity and create new jobs and business opportunities
The Alliance’s Operational Plan focuses the Alliance around areas of activity where collaboration offers the greatest opportunities for economic growth across the Scottish Cities. These are:
- Infrastructure
- Investment Promotion
- Low Carbon
- Hydrogen
- Smart Cities
All areas of activity are interlinked and complementary and supported by Alliance officers who lead on the development of collaborative activity on behalf of the Alliance partners.
Smart Cities Scotland
In October 2015, the Alliance launched its Smart Cities Scotland identity to key stakeholders which set out for the first time Scotland’s cities collective aspirations to be at the forefront of Smart Cities activity and improve services, making Scottish cities more attractive to investors, residents, visitors and the business community. Coinciding with the launch of the Smart Cities Scotland identity, the Alliance announced that it had secured £10 million of ERDF funding as part of “Scotland’s 8th City – The Smart City” Strategic Intervention which once match funded will create a £24 million programme to take forward co-designed technology and data opportunities.
Subsequently, in June 2016, the Alliance’s Leadership Group welcomed the Smart Cities Scotland Blueprint which is essentially a “next steps” guide to progressing Smart Cities activity across the Alliance partners with key stakeholders in the short, medium and longer term.
“Scotland’s 8th City – the Smart City”
The Alliance partners have recently launched a co-designed programme of activity to access £10 million of allocated ERDF funding focused around the key themes of data and technology. The programme, which was officially announced in December 2016 (see press release) is group around the following themes involving the cities as noted in the diagram below:
The General Teaching Council for Scotland is the independent self-regulating body for teaching in Scotland. The Council has a significant role to play in shaping the teaching profession of Scotland and maintaining and improving professional standards. It does this by developing and monitoring the strategic direction and policy of GTCS by determining entry standards to teaching, accrediting courses of teacher education and by setting clear expectations of the profession in its range of published Codes and Professional Standards.
Creative Stirling is a not-for-profit community arts organisation working towards making Stirling a lively and culturally diverse place to live, work and visit. They support the production of creative projects and events for people to enjoy.Stimulatte and nurture creative opportunities for and with their networks and communities And, drive and energise creative industry support throughout the city and beyond.
Wikimedia UK is the national charity for the global Wikimedia movement.We work with the Wikimedia Projects such as Wikipedia to enable people and organisations to contribute to a shared understandingof the world through the democratic creation, distribution and consumption of knowledge.
Wikimedia UK has a strong track record of delivery and works in partnership with organisations from the cultural and education sectors and beyond in order tounlock content, develop new ways of engaging with the public, remove barriers to knowledge and enable learners to benefit fully from the educational potential of the Wikimedia projects. For example, in 2016 the small staff team and our large body of volunteershave worked with over 50 organisations including Bodleian Libraries, British Library, Cancer Research UK, The National Archives, National Library of Wales, Royal Society of Chemistry and Wellcome Library. In Scotland, we are currently working with Museums GalleriesScotland, National Library of Scotland, University of Edinburgh, and Stirling University, amongst others.
One of our core aims is to support the use of the Wikimedia projects as important tools for education and learning in the UK.Working with Wikimedia projects can generate open content and increase access to open knowledge for many – but crucially, this process can be used to build learner’s digital literacy. Knowledge isn’t really open if we don’t also teach people about it and show them how to engage with it. Therefore, we are working on programmes where engaging with Wikimedia projects can build digital literacy and awareness in learners. With the huge rise of the open data project Wikidata, we are working with many institutions to release and integrate their datasets; however, we want to teach data literacy alongside those projects.
The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) is the membership organisation for Scotland’s charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises. It works in partnership with the voluntary sector to advance shared values and interests. SCVO has over 1800 members who range from individuals and grassroots groups, to Scotland-wide organisations and intermediary bodies. Through lobbying and campaigning, SCVO works to advance the interests of their members and the people and communities that they support.
SQA’s purpose is to provide products and services in skills, training and education which positively impact on individuals, organisations and society. They work nationally and internationally in two distinct areas – awards and accreditation.
SQA strives to ensure that their qualifications are inclusive and accessible to all, that they recognise the achievements of learners, and that they provide clear pathways to further learning or employment.
The Centre for Education & Social Policy brings together a range of social, education and related expertise from across Strathclyde including the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences which is home to the Schools of Social Work & Social Policy, Education, Psychological Sciences and Health, Government & Public Policy and Law, and the work of Strathclyde Business School.
All these schools deliver high quality applied professional education for teachers, social workers, educational psychologists, lawyers and policy makers, as well as evidence-based research and practice-based policy.
In addition, all deliver extensive postgraduate and professional development programmes.
The University has one of the largest academic groupings of research, teaching and continuing professional development activity related to the areas of education and social policy.
The Centre for Education and Social Policy brings together this cross-disciplinary expertise, builds on it and helps to deploy it more widely in Scotland, the UK and internationally to develop evidence-based policy that delivers educational and social outcomes that make a difference to people’s lives.
https://www.strath.ac.uk/research/internationalpublicpolicyinstitute/centreforeducationsocialpolicy/
The CoderDojo movement believes that an understanding of programming languages is increasingly important in the modern world, that it is both better and easier to learn these skills early, and that nobody should be denied the opportunity to do so.
To that end, they have built a global network of free, volunteer-led, community-based programming clubs for young people. Anyone aged seven to seventeen can visit a Dojo where they can learn to code, build a website, create an app or a game, and explore technology in an informal, creative, and social environment.
Young Scot is the national youth information and citizenship charity. They provide young people, aged 11 – 26, with a mixture of information, ideas and incentives to help them become confident, informed and active citizens. They do this in a variety of formats, including online, social, apps, magazines, and phone, etc., so young people can access information in a way they are comfortable with.
StirHack is the annual hackathon run through Stirling University ComputerClub. The aim of the event is to bring interested students, from acrossthe UK and Europe, together to work on innovative solutions to sponsorprovided challenges or on projects of their own design.
The event is held in partnership with Major League Hacking and seeks to embody their principles of Learn, Build, Share. Encouraging theparticipants to learn from each other, build their projects and personal networks, and share their creations and knowledge.
StirHack works closely with the University of Stirling, Dogfi.sh Mobile, DovetailGames, and other sponsors, to facilitate the event and we will be takingthe event more towards outreach and engagement with a focus to encouragingstudents into STEM subjects.