Belfast Healthy Cities three Explorer Bursary recipients will travel this autumn to learn from approaches in other cities and bring practical ideas back to Belfast.
The 2026 Explorer Bursary focuses on the theme of Ending Violence Against Women and Girls. The bursary supports individuals and organisations to explore how other places are working to improve safety, strengthen support, prevent harm and create more inclusive public spaces and communities.
This year’s recipients are Clare Morris from McAdam Design Ltd, Dr Leeanne O’Hara from Homeless Connect and Councillor Micky Murray from SOS Bus NI. Clare and Micky will both travel to Glasgow on separate projects, while Leeanne will visit Southampton. Each recipient will explore a different but connected aspect of ending violence against women and girls, before sharing their learning with Belfast Healthy Cities and wider partners later in the year.
Clare Morris will visit Glasgow, with Edinburgh based design partner Helen Willey from SLR, to explore how gender-sensitive and safety-informed thinking can be built into regeneration, public realm and infrastructure projects. Her project will look at how cities can better understand women and girls’ experiences of streets, public spaces and active travel routes, and how that learning can inform the design of safer, more welcoming and more inclusive places.
This is particularly relevant to Belfast as the city continues to consider how public space, regeneration, transport and placemaking can support better health and wellbeing. Clare’s visit will help identify practical lessons that could inform future approaches to designing places where women and girls feel safer, more confident and more able to participate in city life.
Councillor Micky Murray will also travel to Glasgow, but with a different focus. His visit will explore how the city has developed partnership approaches to preventing violence against women and girls, particularly in relation to the night-time economy, public spaces and frontline support.
Through his role with SOS Bus NI, Micky is interested in how cities can provide practical, immediate support to people who may be vulnerable, distressed or at risk. His project will consider issues including safe spaces, bystander intervention, harassment, spiking, student safety and support for women travelling at night. The learning will help inform continued work in Belfast around public safety, prevention and support in the city centre and night-time economy.
Dr Leeanne O’Hara from Homeless Connect will travel to Southampton to explore the links between violence against women and girls, homelessness, housing insecurity and multiple disadvantage. Her project will focus on how services can better respond to women who are experiencing, or at risk of, violence and abuse while also facing housing crisis or homelessness.
Leeanne’s visit will examine how more coordinated responses can support women more effectively, particularly where issues such as domestic abuse, homelessness, trauma, poverty and access to services overlap. This learning will be especially important for organisations working across housing, homelessness, health, community safety and violence against women and girls.
While each bursary recipient has a distinct area of focus, the three projects are strongly connected. Together, they reflect the need for a whole-system approach to ending violence against women and girls, from prevention, policy and urban design, through to immediate support, safe spaces, housing and community-based responses.
The Explorer Bursary is designed to support exactly this kind of learning. By giving people the opportunity to visit other cities, ask questions, build connections and see different approaches in practice, the bursary helps bring new ideas and evidence back to Belfast.
Following their visits, Clare, Leeanne and Micky will present their learning at the end of the year. This will provide an opportunity for Belfast Healthy Cities, partners and wider stakeholders to hear what they found, consider what could be applied locally and explore how the learning can support ongoing action to create a safer, healthier and more inclusive Belfast.
Belfast Healthy Cities looks forward to supporting the three recipients as they undertake their visits and share their learning in the months ahead.
