Durham Community Action (DCA) and the Rural Design Centre (RDC) are working with the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE) to develop a Community Research Network in rural County Durham.
This is part of UK Research and Innovation's new national Community Research Network programme.
What is Community Research?
A community research network is a way of supporting local people to have an active role in research and to move away from academic research where communities sometimes feel they have been "done to".
Members of communities and community organisations have a deep knowledge of their local areas, their assets and needs, and shared issues and problems. This isn’t always recognised and used.
The Young Foundation was commissioned by UKRI to explore how communities can be more equitably involved in knowledge creation. Their findings are reported here
UKRI is building on this report to fund 25 local collaborations across the UK to explore how communities can be more actively involved in setting research agendas, contributing their experiences, collecting relevant information, and influencing positive changes in policy and practice.
In County Durham, our project ran from March 2023 to May 2024 and aimed to build capacity in rural communities to investigate local issues.
The community research network could support and influence decision making by bringing new evidence to light through new facts and information. Insight could contribute to improvements in outcomes for people.
Our Progress
We’ve listened to what local community organisations and networks in rural West Durham, and other stakeholders told us that they hear from local people. We’ve heard about their experience of research and discussed what we need to do to create a research network with communities and how it might work. We did this through workshops, one-to-one meetings and through partnership work.
In September 2023, Sarah Banks from the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action at Durham University facilitated a Knowledge for Change Workshop, in which attendees explored ways VCSE organisations and their members are and can be involved in research on topics that matter to them.
In response to people telling us they wanted to build research and engagement skills we held more workshops in spring 2024. Feedback from the workshops and events can be viewed here:
As a result, we’re we’ve been able to understand how a Community Research Network would be helpful for rural County Durham, what it might be able to achieve and what will make it successful. We are now developing a plan for future action. If we get this action plan right, we will win UKRI funding to run the research network for rural communities for a full five years from Autumn 2024 to 2029.
If you are interested in learning more about community research please email us to join the Community Research Network mailing list.
Key Contacts:
Durham Community Action:
Fiona Christian, Community Partnerships Manager
fiona.christian@durhamcommunityaction.org.uk
National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE):
