Unlocking our hidden entrepreneurs
The people closest to social challenges often have the best ideas to solve them, but the least ability to act. Citizen First pays them a year's salary to build the business, and mobilises their place around them.
The people closest to social challenges often have the best ideas to solve them, but the least ability to act. Citizen First pays them a year's salary to build the business, and mobilises their place around them.
Now open for applications
Free training, mentoring and AI tools to build your business alongside your current work. For ten Liverpool City Region entrepreneurs, November to March, with the University of Liverpool. No AI experience needed. Applications close Sunday 1 November.
Citizen First, our flagship model
of social and economic value for every £1 invested, in year one alone.
"What was missing was never the demand, it was the means to meet it. Citizen First provided that means: a missing layer of civic infrastructure."
Independent evaluation, Brunel University of London and Northumbria University, 2026
A year's Real Living Wage salary so people with lived experience of a problem can build the business that solves it full time, with seed funding, specialist support, and a place systematically mobilised around them.
Three of the entrepreneurs backed in the Liverpool City Region.
Neurodivergent people avoid places they can't predict. Faye built an app that rates venues for sensory accessibility. Live and trading, with thirteen pilot partners from the airport to Liverpool ONE, a combined footfall of over 50 million people a year.
One in three adults struggle with sleep. After a spinal injury taught Sean how central sleep is to recovery, he built an AI-guided sleep support app. Investment secured, and on Alder Hey Children's Hospital's innovation programme with two NHS trials agreed.
Most knife injuries involve an ordinary pointed kitchen knife. Leanne founded a social business to move the country to round-tipped knives. Commercial partnership with Viners, with knives carrying her message on sale in hundreds of Morrisons stores.
As heard on BBC World Service, People Fixing The World with Myra Anubi. Listen to the episode
Next wave
"Every Mayoral Strategic Authority and city region could benefit profoundly from such a programme."
Chris Barton, Director of Local and International Growth, Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade
The independent evaluation concluded the model warrants expansion to other towns and city regions. It is codified, and the next wave of places is taking shape now. If you lead a combined authority, a foundation or an anchor institution, let's talk.
Backed in the Liverpool City Region by
