Therapy Research Sandpit Success

Successful collaborations built and knowledge shared at the Therapy Research Sandpit 2026

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A successful research sandpit was held on 18 August 2026 led by Rebecca Rayner, NIHR Developing Research Leader, with an aim to build therapy staff capacity and capability for research activities, and new collaborations with local Universities. Project ideas from nine allied health professional clinicians across Norfolk and Waveney acute hospitals were circulated to academic colleagues within the School of Health Sciences at the University of East Anglia and the University of Suffolk, and seven colleagues then attended to “design, build and develop” these ideas – with similarities to a sandcastle building activity!

Clinical Academic Professor at NNUH, Dr Phillip Stather, Katie Smith from the NNUH Quality Improvement team, Tom Dymond, Innovation and Research Lead at QEH and Amber-Louise Nash from the NNUH Research and Development team all bought valuable experience to help move clinical ideas to QI and research grant applications. Feedback from the event was very positive with some new academic and clinical collaborations built and increased confidence gained from the clinical colleagues attending to continue working on their ideas with more structured action plans in place now.

Rebecca Rayner, NIHR Developing Research Leader said “It was fantastic to see the positive and productive energy in the room, to hear knowledge being shared with concluding new collaborations commenced. We learnt how our academic colleagues are always keen to hear from clinical colleagues with research ideas or clinical research career aspirations, and attendees all said how the sandpit was a great way of connecting clinical and academic colleagues together.”

This hopefully will be the first of many more Norfolk and Waveney research sandpits so please look out for adverts on the events page of this website and on our NNUH Research Instagram page.