Project Category
All Projects
Project Year - 2025
Research into the viability and impact of an abattoir for private kill services in Lochaber
Small farms and crofters in Lochaber have difficulties accessing private kill abattoir services. This project is to research the feasibility of creating an abattoir, potentially including meat processing and sales, near Fort William for the wider Lochaber area. The objective is to improve local food systems and reduce carbon emissions. A simplified and shorten supply line could offer multiple benefits to Lochaber.
Healthy Environment
Seeding sustainable futures: Building food security through community action
Abundant Borders will save and freely share seeds with people who may not be able to afford to buy them and have little or no experience growing food. Seed saving is an ancient practice that preserves biodiversity, builds resilience, and empowers communities.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Foods
Pollinator Pals: A co-created civic arts and science project improving nature connection and biodiversity in a urban garden
The Pollinator Pals project aims to connect children aged 6-12 years with nature, belonging, and community in a socioeconomically deprived area of Glasgow.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Environment
Rescue. Preserve. Nourish: Turning Surplus into Sustenance
Run as a collaboration between Café Recharge co-founders Amanda Robinson and Amy Wight and Caroline Timmins, a product development technologist at Queen Margaret University, the Rescue. Preserve. Nourish: Turning Surplus into Sustenance project aims to investigate waste reduction through pilot dehydration trials using surplus vegetables and fruit.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Communities
Scran Fir Bees
Through her funded project, environmental artist Natalie Taylor will work in North Edinburgh to extend a series of existing public space artworks incorporating wildflowers to provide nectar-rich habitats and food sources for pollinators. The long-term vision is that these artworks, using large-scale text cut into the landscape, will join up to form a bee corridor across North Edinburgh.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Environment
Improving biodiversity in urban green spaces using participatory citizen science
Urban green areas play a significant role in supporting biodiversity, mitigating heat-related health risks and contributing to public health and resilience against climate change.
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RSE Research Award – Healthy Communities
Owning Carfin Street Gardens
Offering access to 43 raised beds outside the People’s Pantry in Glasgow, Carfin Street Gardens encourages residents to learn about and take control of their food systems through weekly gardening sessions facilitated by a staff member.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Communities
Ecological transformation of the woodland edge at Dronley Community Woodland
Dronley Community Woodland is an area popular with walkers, runners, cyclists and horse riders, with over 20,000 visits annually. It is a multi-purpose woodland where biodiversity, timber production and recreation are equal priorities.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Environment
Scottish Borders orchard research project
The Borders has a rich history of orchards dating back to the establishment of the Border Abbeys. Previous local research has highlighted that old orchards and heritage fruit trees are being lost at a rapid rate but that many new orchards are being established.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Foods
Colvend Lochs aquatic plant survey
The Colvend and Southwick Community Council, with the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI), have been funded to undertake an aquatic and marginal plant survey of the lochs in the Colvend Community Council area.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Environment
Quarter century of discovery: 25 years of bottlenose dolphin photo-identification in the Hebrides
The Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust hold the longest time series of bottlenose dolphin images, collected from sightings in the Hebrides since 2000. Despite this, the data has not been updated or published for nearly a decade.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Environment
Am Monadh Ruadh: A living landscape
Am Monadh Ruadh, the Cairngorm Mountains are the only sub-arctic habitat in Britain. This landscape of plateaus, hills, and glens was once far more lived-in than it is today.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Environment
Full of Beans: A community film and food project
Take One Action brings communities together to harness the transformative potential of film and storytelling for collective change.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Foods
What is a sustainable cup of take away coffee?
South Seeds is a community organisation based in the South Central area of Glasgow. It works in partnership with residents and organisations within the local community to help improve the area’s appearance and feel. The group’s mission is to enable Southsiders to lead more sustainable lives.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Environment
Using compost teas in market gardens to enhance crop health, yield and build healthy soils
Lauriston Farm, run by a workers’ cooperative in North-West Edinburgh, is dedicated to sustainable food production, biodiversity, and community. Building soil health is central to our land stewardship and food production. Chemical fertilisers disrupt the balance of soil health, degrading microbial ecosystems.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Foods
Local pear cultivation and consumption
Pear fruits are an important source of nutrition and fibre with diverse forms: culinary, dessert, juice, and perry. Existing supermarket and wholesale supply chains rely almost entirely on imports of three varieties: Conference, Rocca, and Comice du Doyenne.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Foods
Cupar FoodStation Project
The Cupar Foodstation Project aims to conduct feasibility research into opening a food-themed enterprise and welfare hub in the Cupar town centre, offering a community-led solution and a people-centred approach delivered through local organisations and food producers.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Communities
Project Year - 2024
Exploring Sustainable Solutions for Food Waste in Island Communities
Eday, an island in the Orkney archipelago, has a small community of around 130 people. The community proposes to research and evaluate options to identify a sustainable – and possibly commercial – solution for reducing food waste in an island community.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Environment
Cataloguing commons
What are the challenges involved in organising a seed commons and making seeds accessible?
RSE Research Award – Healthy Foods
Our Right to Food Project
The Our Right to Food project is developing ways to measure the progress towards the right to good quality, affordable food in Scotland.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Foods
The Mycorrhizal Market Garden: what can we learn from fungal networks?
What are the structures, communication strategies, relationships, resources, and supports required to build a cooperative of independent growers that is sustainable, effective, and nourishing for those involved?
RSE Research Award – Healthy Foods
Sustainable food procurement for north Edinburgh
The Community Renewal Trust in Edinburgh is part of the R2 network of organisations that collaborate to achieve better outcomes in local communities.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Foods
Renfrewshire Land Connections
The Centre for Human Ecology proposes to assess and strengthen capabilities for regenerative land use to strengthen adaptation to climate change in Renfrewshire.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Communities
Dualchas: Dynamic connections between community and the land
The community, together with the cultural hub Grinneabhat, propose to investigate innovations that will enable the continuation and expansion of their existing food system.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Communities
Understanding the potential of a resident-led street closure programme – Play Streets in Inverness
Excessive motor vehicle use is an established problem affecting Scotland’s ability to meet its climate-change targets.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Communities
Willow Worlds
Tree planting has never been more important than now, but in Scotland, we face the problem of overgrazing by deer.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Environment
Porridge Power
Porridge Power will take a youth-led, place-based approach to help secondary school students understand and harness the power of the humble porridge oat.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Foods
Rebuilding Biodiversity in Campbeltown
A troubling biodiversity loss within Campbelltown has been identified by the South Kintyre Development Trust.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Environment
Thrift: Climate Conversations
Art Walk Projects aim to develop a series of public conversations with artists, scientists, farmers, landscape architects, and climatologists.
RSE Research Award – Healthy Environment
Project Year - 2023
Ecopoetics Report
Shaping sustainable food futures through education, engagement, and action for a healthy planet.
Public Learning Workshop 2023