Co-designing asset mapping: comparative approaches

Asset based community development (ABCD) is a powerful approach being used with a diverse network of communities and community organizations across the Connected Communities programme to help uncover and utilize their hidden potential, their tangible resources (such as spaces, services and infrastructures) and intangible qualities (such as creative talents, skills, knowledge and social capital). Asset mapping has been deployed as a community engagement, research methodology and co-design tool seeking to enable groups to communicate stories, concerns and achievements but also to generate a shared vision and identify areas for development (personal, economic, environmental, cultural and social). Through a combination of discussion methods with creative techniques (participatory cartography, filmaking, visual art and storytelling, gaming, digital media and theatre performance), asset mapping has been used to trigger creative responses as well as creatively document, visualize and enable collective action, which could potentially improve the livelihoods of groups and communities, their spaces, services and environments.
In this context, the scope and possible meanings of 'mapping' drives central effort into the understanding of the different modes of exploration and representation of, and engagement with, communities. A number of questions direct this: What are the different meanings of mapping? What types of assets are captured by different approaches? What are the social, cultural, psychological, ethical, logistical contexts involved in different asset mapping approaches? How can we creatively analyse and reflect on insights gained from asset mapping methodologies? How can the different asset based methodology be communicated, expressed and represented more effectively to enhance their availability as a resource to the wider community?
It is thus necessary to develop knowledge that comes from comparison, collaborative reflection and evaluation, and, cross-pollination of approaches, and, to develop useful methods and strategies form meaningful analysis, as well as representation and dissemination that will advance academic research, community practice and policy debates.
Our collaboration and approach in this project is unique in that it seeks to advance the exchange of perspectives adopted by the different approaches and to promote an agenda for the evaluation of asset mapping across the humanities, arts and social sciences, both as a research methodology and as a co-design/coproduction tool supporting collective/community engagement and action.
Our collaboration brings together Connected Communities projects from the Open University and the Royal College of Art, and the Universities of Keele, Leicester and Brunel and community partners The Glass-House, Young Vic Theatre and Atenistas Group in Greece. Our methodologies have tapped into narrative and theatre, cultural animation and digital story-telling, group discussion and creative visualisation, participatory chartography and game-playing and brings together philosophical perspectives from American Pragmatism, design studies and informatics, community media and citizen journalism, and fields of action in relation to placemaking and neighbourhood planning, creative networks and volunteerism. The project's innovative mode of delivery includes sharing knowledge and resources among existing CC projects through - field research trips, knowledge exchange with other research projects and experiential workshops where we will co-design approaches for exploring the application of asset mapping in wider and transnational contexts.
We will disseminate our findings in workshops, through a visual website and collaborative report and will feed our lessons into the teaching curricula of the seven universities taking part in the project. Our ultimate aim is to develop the meaningful syntheses, processes and tools around asset mapping approaches that can be sustained and developed.

The impact strategy of this project is tightly intertwined with its research aims and objectives. The project's aims are three-fold: a) to develop a network of community-academic partnerships engaged in asset mapping approaches, within and outside the CC programme, b) to creatively and collectively map and reflect upon the different asset mapping approaches deployed by existing projects, and c) to co-design asset mapping approaches by acting upon existing challenges and opportunities. The identified beneficiaries of the project are local communities and communities of interest, community-based organizations, research institutions, individuals working with communities and policy makers. The project activities and insights are expected to have impact on the social, economic and cultural making of communities in the UK and Greece, on the innovation capacity of community-based organizations and on policy-making.

We have engaged with representatives of direct beneficiaries (project partners) from the start to prepare the proposal in order to ensure that our project will deliver useful and practical outcomes that fit their needs. Our UK community partners are The Glass-House with an experience in working with communities engaged in design and placemaking and The New Vic Theatre with an extensive track record on working with communities that are marginalised. Moreover, our international community partners are Atenistas an open community of citizens organising local actions for transforming cities with local interventions. Community representatives from communities of place and/or communities of interest will be also identified from seven Connected Communities projects and two related research projects.

The activities proposed (field trips, reflective synthesis, co-designing new applications of asset mapping) will lead to the development of a shared understanding of the conditions under which the different tools, methods and contexts can be communicated and represented. This will allow the application of asset mapping approaches in the practice of community organizations and/or build the capacity for a more diversified and informed offering of asset based approaches. It has been postulated that our community partners will benefit for learning on 'how to' apply certain asset-based approaches but also understand their implications and conditions of use. Ideas from this shared understanding will also be cross-fertilised, and further expanded by testing the applicability of various approaches to different contexts in Greece, while learning from the different approaches to mapping and cultural engagement in that context.

In sum expected areas of impact are to:

1. Provide practical and analytical guidelines for academics who engage with local communities and community based organisations
2. develop further effective methods for capturing community level ideas, stories and assets, to improve targeted and sustainable action development by non-profit and supporting organizations
3. Develop public outputs from community achievements and encourage sustained community engagement with academics through co-learning persistent knowledge sharing
4. Contribute to debates about public connection and regeneration by providing a showcase platform and forum for academics, local community groups and community based organisations (CBOs)
5. improve teaching curriculum in areas of design innovation and informatics, community studies, media and communications, management, cultural geography and research methodology.

The deliverables are intertwined with the delivery of the research activities. Data collection, analysis and reflections about the impact of the project are will be communicated in a final report, in a conference paper and in an end of project event. All other activities will be communicated in the project's and community partner's websites.