Researching national strategies, big bets, and the role of 'place'

This year’s Heywood Fellowship is looking at long-term national strategy: how governments come to a national view of what really matters over longer time horizons and how the configuration, mechanisms and capabilities of the state can best enable the pursuit and delivery of long-term outcomes for citizens.

It’s a great privilege for PolicyWISE to partner with this year’s Heywood Fellowship team to help them look at national strategy from a spatial lens. We are interested in how we can be better at using place-specific strengths and opportunities to shape our understanding of national challenges, and to identify the UK’s strategic priorities and “big bets” we need to take to deliver long term impact. We also want to understand how national strategy can be designed and delivered within the complex devolution landscape of the UK and the role of different levels of government in the delivery of longer-term outcomes. 

Working with our friends at Future Governance Forum and the project team, we have engaged with experts within and outside government and looked at national strategy from the perspective of specific places and sectors in the UK, and we will publish details and our findings soon.

Photo of the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, the home of the Heywood Fellowship.