Local Acc Fund 21 Children, Learning and Inclusive Places (CLIP)

The University of Glasgow (UOG) and Queen's University Belfast (QUB) have been early adopters of institutional strategies for research-led community engagement focused on addressing enduring economic and social challenges, through Children's Neighbourhood Scotland (CNS) and Queen's Communities and Place (QCAP). We have been working separately in specific communities in Glasgow, and other areas with high concentrations of poverty, and Belfast and over the last 12 months have developed pilot place-based programmes on children and the environment. The aim of this programme of work, Children Learning and Inclusive Places (CLIP) is to reflect on our experience of place-based co-production in order to both strengthen and build impact into our research and developmental work with our current and with future community partners. Whilst we have worked separately in different areas, we share a conceptual concern for 'capabilities' and how interventions, informed by participatory research, can build more inclusive and locally owned strategies in even the most deprived communities. The value of the inter-university application is that: it brings together separate academic specialisms; different policy, institutional and regulatory regimes; a range of co-design methodologies and impact strategies; and rootedness in the everyday experiences of specific places and the children who live there. This programme of work will: reflect on the connection between community co-production and evidence-based policy impact across our case communities; identify barriers and potential in effective impact; build and test effective practices to support participatory research; and help direct our planned research on children, place and the environment. In short, we see this partnership helping to maximise the impact of our programmes of work; and at the same time build impact, upstream, into our shared concern for environment, place and children's lives.

CNS and the Network for Social and Educational Equity (NSEE) have a Research Practice Partnership Chile in using the capabilities approach developed by CNS to amplify children's voices and their agency in the climate change discussion. This showed how underrepresented their voice is on the environment but also the engaged and articulated nature of the responses across children and young people. Similarly, the community survey in the Market area of Belfast, carried out by QUB, highlighted pollution, car congestion and parking and the under use of derelict sites as one of their key priorities in local regeneration. By evaluating our work with children and place we aim to put co-production at the heart of the research impact debate and, as well as reflecting we aim in this proposal to test out our concepts and ideas on this relationship between children, place and the environment.