Angie Hart, professor of child, family and community health at the Centre for Health Research, is part of a network of 11 academics from UK universities alongside community partners to have won an ESRC award for a joint project entitled 'The social, historical, cultural and democratic context of civic engagement: imagining different communities and making them happen'.
The research will study how communities connect people, both today and in the past. These connections take many forms, but often include people coming together to seek change and pursue a different future. It will also look at what role imagination plays in how such futures are conceived.
The project will investigate and imagine how communities might be different and experiment with different forms of community building. Four main questions will be asked:
- What are the best ways of thinking about research and promoting connected communities which can accommodate social and economic differences and diverse opinions?
- What does the history of civic engagement say about how and why the social, historical, cultural and democratic context matters to community-building?
- What role can imagining better futures play in capturing and sustaining enthusiasm for change?
- Is community research being transformed by developments in social research methodology, particularly the development of collaborative methods?
The focus of Professor Hart's research team's work is the social context of civic engagement and she will work with Dr Becky Heaver, also from the Centre for Health Research, Professor Andrew Church from the School of Environment and Technology, and Kim Aumann from Boing Boing alongside other community partners. The team will complete a series of qualitative interviews with community partners to better understand and capture the key elements of resilient community-university partnership, and to create future scenarios for effective community university partnership working. They will also work with partners to set up community partnerships in four different sites (Brighton, Hastings, Scotland and Crete) using the Community of Practice (CoP) approach to explore ways to build child and family resilience in the face of adversity. CoPs aim to democratise different knowledge bases and promote the value of shared perspectives on problem-solving, practice and theory development. These four CoPs will bring together people with very different affiliations, power statuses and experiences including parents, young people, practitioners and academics. They will develop a comparative data set on the potential for community university partnerships using the CoP approach to bring people from very different backgrounds together to make a better and more resilient future.
For further information, please contact Professor Angie Hart (A.Hart@brighton.ac.uk) or Dr Becky Heaver (B.Heaver@brighton.ac.uk)
