What becomes possible when communities and researchers work together? The British Science Association's Ideas Fund is reimagining 'traditional' research models and exploring how community-led engagement with research has the potential create to social change.
Since 2021, The Ideas Fund has been supporting community-centred engagement with research, making long term, flexible funding available to projects testing out new approaches and collaborations. What began as an experiment in enabling more equitable relationships between academics and communities has now grown into an exploration in redefining the nature and purpose of research. We’ve seen the ways it can create tangible change and impact in communities when those most affected are able to reclaim, shape and direct it. We’re now looking at capturing this learning, and convening people to understand how to make these new approaches to collaboration more sustainable.
We’ve been experimenting with how best to support communities to lead relationships with academic researchers, challenging ‘traditional’ approaches by grounding the partnerships in community activity and aspirations as opposed to being driven by the research/researcher agenda. We’re seeing how enabling different kinds of relationships with researchers, and providing access to research skills and techniques, is supporting communities to achieve incredible impact. We’re interested to explore the role that social funders could have in supporting community-centred research as a method for change.
Why are we doing this?
Historically, collaborations between researchers and communities have been funded within traditional research structures. Academia, taken to include both Universities and the Research Councils who mainly fund in this space, have well-established structures for how knowledge is meant to be created, shared and credited, and researcher collaboration with communities has been required to fit this model.
While there have always been people doing this work with openness, authenticity and with a deep recognition of power, the community experience has been very variable. Charities, communities of place or experience, and other groups have experience of being exploited, extracted from or being spoken over, and of seeing little in return for their participation that is of tangible benefit to them. These experiences have made them distrustful of research and reluctant to embark on collaborations with researchers. Alongside this, research has often been seen as something mysterious and exclusive, remote from the reality of work in communities and not viewed as a tool at their disposal.
The projects we’ve been funding have challenged traditional norms about what research is, who does it and how it’s done – through their partnerships, they have been reclaiming research for communities. Research in this context is relational, adaptive and based on partnership, as well as grounded in valuing different kinds of knowledge.
Key to this has been a prioritisation of relationship – it's not been unusual to hear partners from both community and academia talk about friendship, solidarity and values - even love - in the way they view the strength and productiveness of their partnership. The relationship has driven the research. Defining research questions, developing creative methods that work in their context, and thinking differently about how knowledge is used, have emerged as consistent themes, alongside a shift in thinking as to the purpose of academic institutions and structures, towards working in service of community ambition.
We think there’s a social justice and social impact imperative for supporting this kind of work which other types of funders could play a critical role in.
Why is community-centred research important?
As these partnerships have evolved and flourished, we have started to see new practices emerge both in research, but also in the delivery of communities’ everyday work. The impact being seen as a result of these close collaborations is far beyond any expectations we had from the funding.
Some examples include:
- OPEN in Shetland began their project by supporting young people to do their own research into the lack of a communal space for them to access. As a result of building their research expertise, they have gone on to lead research into a number of other issues including drug and alcohol use on the island, which is now having an impact on both policy and practice locally. Such is their commitment to this approach, they have since decided to embed peer research methodology into their governance structures, with young people and decision makers working together to share experience, data and knowledge to improve outcomes for young people, supported by professional researchers.
- OSHI in Hull connect people with lived experience of addiction and mental distress for mutual support. They received their first ever grant in 2022 to work with a researcher to explore how this work could be better facilitated through digital innovation. The partnership has enabled them to grow their reach such that they have progressed into the Propel Yorkshire digital health accelerator programme, and are looking to pilot a collaboration with their local Ambulance service to be part of their clinical pathway.
Through the work we’ve been doing, we have a strong sense that these new approaches to research have real potential to enable communities to reflect on their work, adapt their methods and create better impact. Creative outputs which they have produced alongside their researchers, such as zines, plays, games and artworks, as well as more traditional reports, give them resources which can both enhance their community activities and help them to influence for change in the wider system.
Researchers have redefined their role as being in service to their community partners, seeing research as a practice of care not of information collection. Through investing time in the relationship, everyone involved has been able to share what they want to get out of the process. Researchers have expressed a stronger sense of confidence and belief that something impactful would come from the work, because, whatever they did, it would be guided by what mattered to the community.
There’s a growing recognition from within the research system/sector that community-centred approaches have the potential to lead to better research questions, more appropriate methods, better data and ultimately more applicable findings. But research can also be a powerful mechanism for system change, elevating the voices and experiences of those who are most marginalised in society and challenging harmful narratives while shining a light on truly impactful solutions. We think there’s a social justice and social impact imperative for supporting this kind of work which other types of funders could play a critical role in.
Collaboration with researchers, where this is properly supported through flexible long term funding with a focus on relationships and trust, is another way of achieving the kinds of change which are important to communities. We have seen that working with researchers has empowered individuals and communities in ways that reach beyond the lifespan and boundaries of the funded project, building collective capacity and commitment for change. We’re interested in exploring how we support that with other funders – either through partnership, or through sharing everything we’re learning.
The Funders Collaborative Hub publishes a range of perspectives. The views expressed here are those of the authors, not necessarily those of ACF.
