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Participant-Making : Bridging The Gulf Between Community Knowledge And Academic Research

This paper presents the findings from Participants United, an AHRC funded Connected Communities project. In this paper the findings from the project of a meta study of multiple participatory community engagement projects that have taken place over the last five years. A diverse and broad range of participants, from the Geezers (retired factory workers from the East End of London working on community power), Stemistry (poets working with stem cell scientists) and community workers in Liverpool and Islamic women’s communities in Bradford. Core findings reflected on the ethical role of participant academic researchers working with communities with the aim to provide lessons of ‘shared consent’ for policy makers. This paper conducted an arts-led community participation meta study of participants’ experience of public engagement. It was conducted through a two-day community participation workshop held in June 2011. The findings in this paper reflect the differences between academic researchers, transparency and access to information.

The core insight generated through this research is that community groups who have had extensive experience of participation in academic research projects need to be included in the process of funding and evaluating of research across the academic sector.

The findings were presented to the AHRC Connected Communities panel in January 2011 who are now adopting content from this research in future funding calls and guidelines – specifically to include participant community groups in future funding workshops on this theme.