Across Scotland, 24 community research projects will receive a share of £339,464 funding through the RSE’s Healthy Planet, Healthy People Awards, developed in partnership with, and funded by the Williamson Trust.

First initiated in 2023, Healthy Planet, Healthy People Awards are now offered under two strands:

Healthy Planet, Healthy People: Catalyst Awards are designed to enable community-led research across any discipline that promotes the health of individuals by fostering healthy communities, environments, and food.

Healthy Planet, Healthy People: Change Awards are a new expansion of the Catalyst Award, offering support to standout Catalyst Awarded projects with major funding to grow and scale their work.

These awards encourage knowledge exchange and collaborative research practices amongst and between local communities. The resulting findings and outputs are often scalable, producing valuable insights that can be used by similar groups working in other areas of the country and beyond.

Professor David Salt FRSE, chair of the Williamson Trust, said, “The trustees at the Williamson Trust are delighted to fund 20 exciting community-led projects from across Scotland in the third round of the Healthy Planet, Healthy People: Catalyst Awards. As this community-led work continues to grow there can be no doubt communities across Scotland can build local solutions to ongoing challenges to our environment, our communities and our food. This round we have projects spanning seed saving, community growing, fermentation and compositing to coppicing, tree identification, accessing green space, transhumance and repair café. An amazing array of projects.

This year the Williamson Trust have introduced the Healthy Planet, Healthy People: Change Awards. These larger awards allow successful Catalyst awardees to take their learnings and experiences and develop solutions to deliver broader impact and sustainable outcomes. The Williamson Trust is funding four Change awards in this first round on sustainable tree guards, flax and the new textile commons, closing the island’s food loop and a community food hub. It will be so exciting to see these projects grow and develop.

The Trust hopes that with these new awards we continue to build a movement of committed people to find solutions to the challenges faced by local communities, and that these solutions can have wider impact.”

RSE Vice President, Research, Professor Anne Anderson OBE FRSE commented, “This marks the third successful round of Healthy Planet, Healthy People: Catalyst Awards, which were introduced to expand the type of research the RSE supports. At this time, we are also very pleased to announce the first recipients of the Healthy Planet, Healthy People: Change Awards; a new development of the Healthy Planet, Healthy People Programme, which extends the support offered to grassroots groups and demonstrates the Society’s commitment to empowering community-driven research focused on positively impacting sustainability, health, and community resilience. I congratulate all those awarded under both schemes, and I look forward to following their progress and achievements over the coming year.”)

Link to Project Award Page