In January 2020 we announced the launch of Our Shared Future, an initiative aimed at bringing together skills, knowledge and expertise from the University, B&NES and across the city to explore and address major challenges in Bath and the region.

Three themes were initially identified by B&NES as priorities: cohesion and inclusivity, infrastructure and climate change with three workshop discussions reported at the evening event held in the Guildhall.

The feedback provided by attendees at the launch event has been reviewed and helped inform both some of the follow up activity on the three initially identified themes and other collaborative work including the workshop ‘Beyond the car: Future mobility in Bath’ held on 3 February which brought together experts in transportation and city planning from across the region to discuss challenges and opportunities.

One of the ideas discussed at the ‘Our Shared Future’ event was the creation of a ‘Low Carbon Heating Task Force’ to explore how the University’s research resource and expertise can be applied to decarbonise and efficiently heat buildings and explore possible ways of reducing household energy consumption in Bath and North East Somerset. Work to set up this Task Force is underway.

We’ll continue to provide regular updates on Our Shared Future through the enewsletter and our community webpages.