Legacy of Connected Communities

This AHRC project explores ways of evaluating and enhancing the legacy of the Connected Communities (hereafter CC) programme by investigating and reflecting on the impacts that four projects funded within this programme have had in both in the communities with whom they were conducted and can have in new community settings, both in the UK and beyond. It explores these legacies in terms of methodological approaches, cultural outputs or artefacts, and partnerships, drawing on and developing a contextualist three dimensional model of change advanced by Pettigrew (1985, 2011).

The overall aim of the project is to explore and evaluate issues of legacy of four Connected Communities Projects in terms of their methodologies, outputs and partnerships.

These projects are:

• Exploring Personal Communities: A Review of Volunteering Processes (AH/J012238/1);
• Bridging the gap between academic rigour and community relevance (AH/K006185/1);
• Untold Stories of Volunteering: A Cultural Animation Project (AH/K006576/1);
• Revisiting the Midpoint of British Community Studies (AH/J006920/1)

There are five interconnected objectives:

1. To evaluate the intended and unintended legacies of CC projects in terms of their methodologies, cultural outputs and partnerships;
2. To support and upscale the legacy of such projects by enlisting new communities and institutional stakeholders (such as Locality and the Department of Communities and Local Government);
3. To critically reflect on and learn from the positive and negative experiences of working in a cross-disciplinary and collaborative manner with community partners and other institutional stakeholders with the view to shed new light on what counts as quality, originality and impacts of research;
4. To co-produce and disseminate knowledge about what methodology works best in what context;
5. To synergise and exploit more fully the existing expertise and knowledge co-created within the CC programme in an international context.

• Professor Mihaela Kelemen (PI), Keele University
• Dr Martin Phillips (CI), Leicester University
• Susan Moffat (CI), Borderlines Director, New Vic Theatre
• Jess Steele (CI),  Jericho Road Solutions
• Professor Tima Bansal, Western Ontario University, Canada
• Deborah James,  NCVO

• June 6, 2014:  An evaluative workshop took place at Oxford House, London (details attached and Programme)
• June 21-22, 2014, Locality Action Camp:  Sue Moffat and Mihaela Kelemen run a cultural animation workshop with community organisers (photos below):
  
  
   

• September 25, 2014  A workshop and presentation on Volunteering at the National Association of Neighborhood Management/Big Local event, Stoke-on-Trent:
• October 23, 2014:  A workshop on Cultural Animation/Glossopoly at the New Vic Theatre (Workshop Invitation)

• March 16th, 2015 The launch of Community Animation and Social Innovation Centre-CASIC
• March 19th, 2015, GreenKeele Cultural Animation Workshop on Sustainability (photos below)

• April 23rd, 2015: Big Local Spring Event, Birmingham
• April 25th, 2015, Big Local Spring Event, London (photos below):

• June, 2015: Field trip to Canada
  Professor Mihaela Kelemen (KMS/CASIC), Sue Moffat (New Vic Theatre/CASIC), Professor Martin Philips, Leicester University and Jess Steele, Jericho Road Solutions spent a week in Canada disseminating research findings and methodologies of co-production used in four Connected Communities projects funded by the AHRC.  The field trip was part of one of the seven Legacy projects funded by the AHRC to capture and evaluate the impact of the Connected Communities Programme. The team was hosted by Professor Tima Bansal, Executive Director of the Network for Business Sustainability at Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario.  A series of talks and workshops were organised at the university and in the community. The cultural animation workshop hosted by the Pillar Non-profit Network on cross-sector collaboration attracted over forty members from the private, public and third sector.  Further research talks and cultural animation workshops on volunteering and community organizing were delivered in the City of Markham, Toronto where more than fifty participants debated the findings of the research carried out by the UK team and had a taster of cultural animation in relation to identifying and resolving issues present in their local communities.

  Ivey Business School Research Seminar

  Photos from London Ontario:

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    Photos from Markham:

    

     

• Final Evaluative Legacy Report
• Practice Report