ENCOMPASS: Engaging Communities, Publics and Society

Community focused public engagement is a powerful way to bring research closer to the community that it serves; but a major obstacle is how researchers identify community groups that may benefit from such engagement. Social science and civic engagement practice has shown that significant impact may be achieved through engaging directly with communities. ENCOMPASS aims to build on this concept by introducing community organising as a central method of public engagement. Community organising goes beyond engagement activity in seeking to equip and enable communities to take ownership and drive change. By introducing environmental science researchers to community organising, ENCOMPASS will provide communities with the tools to articulate environmental issues that resonate with them and therefore enable greater shared ownership of the research agenda. This shared ownership will then lead to greater, more directed impact and open up new networks and creative possibilities for researchers. The ENCOMPASS scheme will enable researchers to identify and reach underrepresented groups and equip both parties with the understanding and tools to co-develop activities, initiatives and actions that have mutual benefits

ENCOMPASS will progress to a national scheme that recognises the improved environmental awareness and activity of community groups. Phase I will establish a partnership with CitizensUK, a community organising body whose core mission is to empower and support communities to take positive actions around social justice, policy, education and politics. CitizensUK are made up of a number of faith, community and trade union groups and have regional chapters across the UK. Citizens UK Birmingham will have the central role of assisting ENCOMPASS environmental researchers to identify community groups that may stand to benefit from environmental action. ENCOMPASS will also partner with the Earthwatch Institute, citizen science specialists, who will be instrumental in helping to introduce science and scientific concepts to community groups. Together with Citizens UK and Earthwatch the ENCOMAPSS team will co-develop a series of small community based, and led, activities and actions. This experience will be used to develop a model that can be transferred to other regional centres with the help of CitizensUK regional offices and Earthwatch's national reach. Thus ENCOMPASS Phase I is building a national consortium that will go on to bid in Phase II for the extension of community organising to a national scale and the establishment of the ENCOMPASS scheme.

This project will involve 5 small community-researcher co-developed projects that will be based around the West Midlands spanning urban and rural areas. A range of University and community locations will be used help assess how access affects engagement. These locations will include the Art Fund of the Year 2017 nominated Lapworth Museum of Geology and the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research Free Air Carbon Enrichment (BIFoR FACE) facility, aka the 'Sci-Fi Forest', in Staffordshire. In addition ENCOMPASS is supported by a list of partners that are providing significant contributions of their time and expertise in environmental sciences, education and experience in running large public engagement projects. These partners range from small community groups to schools to local councils and produce an indication off the sort of networks and range of involvement that ENCOMPASS will recruit and develop. By developing the ENCOMPASS framework model in this way we can present national partners with an adaptable and dynamic way to translate community organising across a large consortium. To this end, the major capacity that we plan to build is in learning how the dialogue between researchers and communities can build trust and establish shared interests.