“Newyddion i Bawb” is awarded UKRI’s Community Innovation Practitioner Award

Cardiff University has been awarded UKRI’s Community Innovation Practitioner Award, for “Newyddion i Bawb” (News for All), to inspire new forms of community journalism in Cardiff. 

The Creative Communities programme, funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and led by Northumbria University, has extended its signature award, the Community Innovation Practitioner (CIP) Awards, for a new 2025-26 cohort. This represents an investment of nearly £500,000 to catalyse place-based innovation across all 4 nations of the UK research ecosystem. 

The AHRC Creative Communities programme examines the role of culture and devolution in unlocking cross sector co-creation and place-based innovation across all 4 nations of the UK. 

The new cohort CIP award holders will galvanise creativity in their regions. In Wales, with support from Welsh national broadcaster S4C, the “Newyddion i Bawb” project harnesses significant match funding from a range of media and government partners to explore what communities need from informational storytelling. It will work with the broadcaster to prototype, develop and test solutions in real-world journalism environments to better connect culture, news and communities across Wales. 

Newyddion i Bawb is led by Community Innovation Practitioner, Shirish Kulkarni. Shirish Kulkarni is a journalist, researcher and community organiser – currently News Innovation Research Fellow at Media Cymru and Founder of Inclusive Journalism Cymru. 

Professor Justin Lewis, Director of Media Cymru and Co-Director of the Centre for the Creative Economy at Cardiff University, said:  

“Following a successful participatory project in Grangetown last year, the ‘Newyddion i Bawb’ project has already worked with some of Wales’ marginalised people and communities to better understand exactly what citizens want and need from journalism, and to co-create new models of news or public information that work for them. Receiving this award means that ‘Newyddion i Bawb’ can be extended to more communities across Wales, while further developing new impactful forms of journalism.   

This new iteration of ‘Newyddion i Bawb’ builds upon the report ‘News For All: The Story So Far’, further investigating how to deliver value for all through journalism and putting community at the centre of the process. This project enables the next step, both by working with a very different community and taking co-creation to produce new models and approaches. I hope the outcomes from sessions in Blaenau Ffestiniog will demonstrate how we can build on this work across regions in the UK to develop new, impactful forms of journalism” 

Partners for the “Newyddion i Bawb” project inlcude: Y Dref Werdd (Vale of Ffestiniog), S4C, Creative Wales, Inclusive Journalism Cymru, PDR, CellB (Blaenau Ffestiniog).  

About the Community Innovation Practitioner Awards   

The CIPs will generate vital new knowledge about co-creation and the unique role played by their communities and partnerships in growth through new research, development and innovation (RD&I).   

Each CIP will produce a case study, policy paper and an episode of the Creative Communities podcast series to share learning from their community and cultural partners.  Together, the CIPs will form a Community of Practice network with the aim of fostering new relationships and sharing innovative practice.   

Funding has been awarded to six new CIPs across a spectrum of projects that represent the rich cross-sector community research and inclusive innovation that is catalysing growth in all 4 nations of the UK.  

About Creative Communities     

AHRC Creative Communities is a £3.9m major research programme based at Northumbria University in Newcastle. It builds a new evidence base on how cultural devolution can enhance belonging, address regional inequality, deliver devolution and break down barriers to opportunity for communities in devolved settings across all four nations of the UK.     

For more information you can also visit the Creative Communities website.