Community Voice, Connection and Creativity…Celebrating the Launch of Dorset’s Community Research and Engagement Network.
Recently, we came together as community leaders, researchers, grassroots organisations, academics and statutory partners to celebrate the launch of our local Community Research and Engagement Network (CREN). The event showcased a growing movement across Dorset to make research more inclusive, accessible and rooted in the knowledge and experiences of local communities.
Importantly, the day was not about starting from scratch. Across Dorset there is already excellent community engagement taking place every day through voluntary organisations, community groups, health and care partners, and networks such as Bournemouth University’s Public Involvement in Education and Research (PIER), which has been championing meaningful public involvement in research for many years. CREN seeks to build on these strong foundations, creating more opportunities to connect people, share learning and strengthen community-led approaches across the county.
Opening the event, Samantha Bingham from Community Action Network (CAN), invited everyone to leave their titles at the door and come together first and foremost as members of the communities they live in and support. She spoke about the growing recognition across health, care and public services that meaningful engagement takes time, trust and relationships, and celebrated the increasingly important role that community organisations are playing in shaping Dorset’s future.
Siobhan Lennon-Patience from The Lantern Trust followed by sharing the story behind CREN and its ambition to help ‘flip the power’ in research. Highlighting how research priorities have often been set far from the people most affected by them and reinforced the importance of valuing lived experience as evidence. Our vision for CREN is simple but powerful, bringing together communities, researchers, practitioners and institutions as equal partners, creating opportunities for knowledge to be developed with communities rather than for them.
The diverse mix of speakers throughout the day demonstrated exactly what this looks like in practice. Attendees heard from Kim Wilcocks of Island Community Action, who shared examples of engaging young people in research and decision-making. Community researchers from The Lantern Trust inspired the room through creative writing and poetry, showing how storytelling can help people explore and communicate lived experiences. Emma Greenslade from FLAiM spoke about people with learning disabilities influencing local Day Opportunities service design, delivery and wider Adult Social Care Transformation agendas.
The second round of presentations continued this theme. Jo Wilson from NHS Dorset shared how health services are working alongside voluntary and community organisations to gather meaningful insight and co-design future health pathways. Sandra Prudom from Christchurch Community Partnership and Kate Jupp from Bournemouth University’s Public Involvement in Education and Research (PIER) Partnership shared the design and findings of the Hidden Hunger project; and Poonam Paranjpe, Co-Founder of the BPC Indian Community, spoke about a co-designed healthy ageing initiative developed with ethnic minority communities.
These stories reflected the broad range of people already helping shape research and service design across Dorset, and that the best research and services are created when the people most affected by decisions are involved in making them.
The event created opportunities for participants to connect, reflect and learn from one another. Alongside networking and presentations, attendees took part in facilitated table discussions exploring inclusion in research and what needs to happen to make engagement more meaningful and accessible.
Across the discussions, there was a strong call for research to be more inclusive, accessible and connected to people’s everyday lives. Participants felt that people are more likely to get involved when research focuses on issues that matter to them, values lived experience and creates genuine opportunities to shape decisions and influence change.
The afternoon brought these themes to life through a range of interactive activities and exhibits. Attendees contributed ideas to the Language Lab aimed at making research language more accessible, visited project showcases and joined conversations about strengthening Dorset’s community research ecosystem. The space was alive with discussion, creativity and collaboration. Attendees also had the opportunity to engage with The Colour Works Foundation, whose creative activities around the colour model of behaviour brought an additional sense of participation and fun.
Perhaps the most powerful aspect of the day was seeing people connecting as equals. Community groups shared ideas with academics. Statutory organisations learned from grassroots leaders, new partnerships began and existing relationships grew stronger.
The launch of CREN was a celebration of the fantastic engagement work already taking place across Dorset and a commitment to doing even more together. As the conversations, creativity and enthusiasm throughout the day demonstrated, there is a shared determination to ensure that community voices are not simply heard, but actively shape the research, services and decisions that affect people’s lives.
If the launch was anything to go by, the future of community-led research in Dorset is bright, collaborative and full of possibility.
To join the MS Teams Virtual Network, email samantha.bingham@can100.org
