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The social enterprise Mapping for Change (MfC) was established to make use of participatory mapping knowledge and software created through research at UCL. Since 2009, MfC has secured more than 20 contracts worth in excess of £435,000, and has delivered over 30 projects in many communities, directly engaging more than 5,000 people and reaching far more online and indirectly. Its projects have increased community engagement in the local environment, led to new environmental monitoring by local authorities and stimulated policy debate about noise and air pollution.
Successive Scottish Governments, local authorities, statutory bodies and sector agencies have sought to address issues of community (re)engagement with their historic environment within community-building and place-making social agendas. Through History Tomorrow, our commercial history unit, we have been central to initiatives designed to restore property of the past to communities. Our major impact is with Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) projects like Prestongrange, Kilmun, and the Ochils Landscape Partnership (OLP), where community volunteers were trained and empowered to undertake their own research, thereafter becoming trainers themselves. Imparting such training skills to community volunteers restores a sense of possession of their `own' histories and effectively inculcates post-funding sustainability amongst them.
Research conducted within the University of East London's Institute of Health and Human Development (IHHD) is reshaping the development, commissioning, delivery and evaluation of interventions to address the wider determinants of health and health-inequalities, and has had impacts on public policy, service design and, ultimately, public health and wellbeing. Grounded in close relationships with policy-makers and end users, UEL's primary research into community development and co-production has informed the design of health improvement interventions, delivered through the cross-institutional, community-based Well London project. Research findings have driven Big Lottery funding priorities, contributed to parliamentary debates on health, informed NICE and Local Government guidance, shaped Marmot Review Team and NESTA policy, and led health authorities to commission new services and adopt new approaches to service delivery.
We have been involved in initiatives to improve the health behaviour of ~20,000 people from deprived communities, with a focus on increasing levels of physical activity, dietary change, and engagement with natural environments (e.g., parks). We have worked with communities to ensure the sustainability of these positive changes. Further, we have disseminated our research widely through engagement with stakeholders to influence practice and policy and through media coverage. These impacts are based on our research which has demonstrated that to change health behaviours multiple levels of intervention are required and we have focused on two of these levels; community engagement and changing the environment.
The Scots Words and Place-names Project (SWAP) engaged the public through an embedded use of the internet and social media, a strategy designed both to collect data on the Scots language and to raise the profile of Scots in the wider community. In order to make the project accessible to younger generations, a successful schools competition was run using Glow, the Scottish schools intranet operated by Education Scotland. SWAP also involved two partner organisations from the cultural sector, Scottish Language Dictionaries and the Scottish Place-Name Society, in order to provide a bridge between academic and cultural bodies and the general public.
Research undertaken by Monro from the Centre for Research in the Social Sciences (CRISS) into the continuing marginalisation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people has influenced UK and international policymaking and practice. Addressing key issues concerning relationships between LGBT people and state institutions, the research findings have helped to shape the development of practice in central government departments, local authorities, housing associations, healthcare and community organisations and voluntary sector associations. This impact has resulted in improvement to the material and social conditions of LGBT people, enhancing their ability to contribute to society and the economy, in line with the EU Horizon 2020 theme of promoting inclusive, innovative and reflective societies. The case study provides evidence that the research has raised awareness about LGBT issues. This cultural shift is crucial to improving the life experiences and economic productivity of LGBT people, given the lack of understanding that they commonly face, and the negative impacts on their wellbeing of prejudice and social erasure.
This case study concerns the development, adoption and dissemination of innovative `community-owned' approaches to the sustainable management of social-ecological systems (SES) within the Guiana Shield region of South America. Spanning the countries of Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and areas of Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia, this region is of recognized global significance for carbon storage, fresh water resources and biodiversity. Its indigenous, Amerindian communities have a potentially crucial role to play in sustainable conservation policy and practice. However, local economic and cultural changes, extractive industries, and global dynamics such as climate change are bringing profound challenges to these local communities and their SES. Research at Royal Holloway has responded to these challenges by involving indigenous peoples in both biodiversity science and sustainability policy. The work allows indigenous communities to identify, through participatory research methods, the most effective practices they have for surviving and thriving sustainably.
The impacts of the research are of four main types:
Nowhereisland by artist Alex Hartley was a public artwork curated and produced by Claire Doherty as part of the Situations public art commissioning programme. This large-scale touring public artwork and accompanying online programme of activity enabled over 23,000 active participants (including over 10,000 young people) from 135 countries to reimagine civic responsibility and citizenship and to rethink the nature of place, belonging and nationhood within the context of the London 2012 Olympiad. As an internationally recognised example of progressive, time-based, participatory public art Nowhereisland helped change perceptions about the nature of public art.
Professor Richard Wiseman has conducted several mass participation experiments. He has employed this approach to create high-profile projects in order to help communicate key findings from academic psychology to the public. This case study focuses on one such initiative. In 2009, `The Science of Happiness' project involved over 20,000 members of the public carrying out a series of evidence-based exercises designed to boost subjective well-being. Participant feedback revealed that the exercises had a significantly beneficial effect. The reach of this work was greatly increased by reports in the national media and a popular psychology book.
For almost 50 years UK governments have designated area-based initiatives (ABIs) to moderate social, economic and environmental problems in disadvantaged urban areas. A research team from the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) has been assessing and explaining changes associated with ABIs for more than 20 years. Insights from two long-standing and inter-related research themes impacted on regeneration policy and practice in the post 2007 period: developing innovative methodologies through which to monetise benefits of ABIs; and research scoping the scale and nature of longer-term outcomes associated with ABIs, including those related to the engagement of communities. Impact has been achieved through the dissemination of findings and the provision of advice and guidance to government policy makers, committees and politicians. Beneficiaries from this research include central government regeneration policy makers, lobbying organisations and think tanks.