New Big Lottery-funded research initiative, Drill, will rely on partnerships between disabled people and academics to uncover and pilot good ideas
Underlying Drill will be partnerships between disabled people’s organisations and researchers, with disabled people involved at every stage.
Drill is consulting on the themes that have initially been drawn up for the research programme. There are three cross-cutting themes: autonomy, peer support, and resilience; and a cluster around social citizenship, economic participation and civic participation.
Based on the feedback on these themes, the first calls for proposals will go out around April 2016. Programme officers will help link up disabled people’s groups and academics across the UK and help them to develop appropriate proposals. Over five years, it is planned that there will be six large research projects costing around £100,000 each, 20 smaller projects at around £40,000 each, and then 14 pilot projects to implement new ideas at around £150,000 each.