Citizen First Liverpool City Region, 2025 to 2026
Entrepreneurs from across the city region, each paid a year's salary to build a business from lived experience, backed by the Metro Mayor, the Combined Authority, the University of Liverpool and more than fifty local organisations.
Independent evaluation
By Brunel University of London and Northumbria University, using social return on investment analysis, participatory action research and oral history. Impact on individuals, communities and place, the headline figures, and a short film with each entrepreneur.
The entrepreneurs
Neurodivergent people avoid places they can't predict. Faye built an app that rates venues for sensory accessibility: a TripAdvisor for the neurodiverse.
Live and trading. Investment secured, a paid partnership with a national healthcare provider, winner of Baltic Ventures Launchpad 2026, and thirteen pilot partners signed, from Liverpool John Lennon Airport to Liverpool ONE.
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: a sleep doctor in your pocket.
App built. Investment and grant funding secured. Accepted onto Alder Hey Children's Hospital's innovation programme, with trials agreed in two NHS settings.
Most knife injuries involve an ordinary pointed kitchen knife. Leanne founded a social business to move the country to round-tipped knives.
Community interest company established. Commercial partnership with Viners, with round-tipped knives carrying her message on sale in hundreds of Morrisons stores since March 2026.
Setting up a business is lonely when you're young. Katie built the UK's first network for founders under 35, combining business support with mental wellbeing.
Over 30 events reaching 350 young people in the year. The YEC app built. A subscription membership launched and generating revenue.
Around 80% of UK salons are inaccessible in some way. Frankii, a hairdresser, is building the UK's first fully accessible mobile salon to bring the high street to people who can't reach it.
First prototype van designed, built and in pilot. Plans to scale to a national fleet.
Nature transformed life for Ceara's own son. She runs nature-based wellbeing programmes for children, with a focus on special educational needs, in a once-neglected woodland.
Sessions sell out weekly, with thousands taking part in the year. Social investment secured to launch the Laurel's Wood Academy for young people at risk of becoming NEET.
Excluded from sport as a disabled child, Mat is building the inclusive sport experiences he wished he'd had: accessible activity, media and immersive technology, co-designed with disabled people.
Funding secured and revenue generated. Regular sessions running in community settings, including a local school and a care home.
Women in minority ethnic communities are far less likely to get help with menopause. Abeer, a registered nutritionist, built a culturally informed menopause and nutrition service: clinics, community programmes and workplace partnerships.
Funding secured. A new paid-for offer developed and piloted.
Lorcan has built robots since he was 16. He joined Citizen First to turn that into robots that improve people's lives.
Working prototype robotic arm built. Applications being explored with the Royal Liverpool Hospital, including improving working conditions in surgery.
Status as recorded in the independent evaluation, July 2026.
As heard on BBC World Service, People Fixing The World with Myra Anubi.
The evaluators concluded the model warrants expansion. The next wave of places is being agreed now.